
Class3_i/4.B}0 
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THE 

CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY 

OF LIFE 



THE 

CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY 

OF LIFE 

g>ennon0 preacljeD in t^t 
2E>artmout^ College Cl^urc!^ 

BY 

SAMUEL PENNIMAN LEEDS 
Pastor^ j86o-igoo 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

(iCJbe mitoerjibe prei^?, CambriDge 

1904 



^M ■• 



UBRa«Y of OONGRFSS 


Two Gooles Received 


JUN 24 1904 


•l CoDyrlgrht Entry 


CLASS ^ XXo. No. 
' COPY B 



COPYRIGHT 1904 BY SAMUEL PENNIMAN LEEDS 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



Published June igo4 



is 



^J^ This volume 

p^ is inscribed by the Author 

with deep respect and warm regard 

to 

PRESIDENT WILLIAM JEWETT TUCKER 

Most truly a man of vision in 

heavenly things and earthly 

and 

PROFESSOR CHARLES A. YOUNG 

Eager student of the skies 

As representatives of their Alma Mater 



PREFACE 

Were I to select from among the younger 
half of Dartmouth's graduates any to be 
specially mentioned here, there is one I 
should name. He grew up in my home, 
and he passed all his college years with me. 
Peculiar ties of other kinds, also, bind us 
very closely together. Besides, it is at his 
instance that this volume has been pre- 
pared. I was reluctant, for I felt that my 
sermons when preached had done their 
work, and I was getting ready to destroy 
them. But he urged the thought of possi- 
ble usefulness ; I might be doing some- 
thing in the kingdom still. I listened, and 
yielded. 

For the sake of some, I should say that, 
until very lately, college and village have 
worshiped together in Hanover from the 



viii PREFACE 

very beginning. Until recently all students 
were required to be in church every Sun- 
day, so that a chief part of my work in the 
pulpit was to hold their attention, and to 
benefit them so far as I might. My audi- 
tors were of very different ages, and often 
so among the students themselves. 

Although these sermons express the con- 
victions of a long life, — convictions for 
which that life has stood, — they are not 
intended to be examples of my preaching. 
At least forty Sundays a year for a gener- 
ation, and twice a Sunday for much the 
greater part of that time — twenty-five 
hundred and more written or unwritten 
sermons cannot be represented by twenty. 
My range of topics has been large, perhaps 
unusually so. I could select only a few dis- 
courses on some of them. I have chosen, 
too, only such as have been preached in 
term-time of the college, with possibly a 
single exception. There is scarcely one of 
them that has not been given to several 



PREFACE ix 

college classes; on an average, each has 
been delivered three times, and therefore 
heard by at least ten classes. 

Besides other limitations, I have adopted 
a specific subject for this volume, " The 
Christian Philosophy of Life." Hence I 
have left out many sermons on themes in 
which I take a deep interest, an interest 
even deeper than in some treated here. 
The topics of this book, then, are very 
largely ethical. Yet I have aimed always to 
keep within sight of Olivet, and from that 
Calvary itself is not far away. If it is asked 
whether all fall definitely within my sub- 
ject, I avow that I can conceive of no real 
philosophy of life which does not distinctly 
recognize " Easter " with its implications 
and glorious hopes. Still more obviously, 
perhaps, must " Reconciliation," " Modern 
Thought," and " Christian Agnosticism " 
be considered, for the claims of the intel- 
lect must be fully allowed, nay, honored, 
for it is un-reason which the Gospel decries 



X PREFACE 

when it summons to faith. In preaching 
to the same young people for successive 
years, I felt called, without technical dis- 
cussion, to lead them to discriminate justly, 
and so to perceive the solemn and practi- 
cal claims of duty. I hold, too, that in a 
college pulpit, if not elsewhere, one third 
of the preacher's power for good depends 
on what he does not say. Among other 
things, half truths and assertions that 
need to be " discounted " are best omitted, 
like flippancy and levity. Exact thinking 
and lucid thinking are to be his earnest 
aim. He is to speak what he is stire of, 
and nothing else or more. 

A word on the sermons selected may be 
desirable. The first might fitly be called a 
prologue. The second plainly applies to 
young men of all classes. The last matches 
the first in a way, as the next to the last 
does the second. The third is intended for 
those especially of ambitious aspirations. 
The fourth is intended for a number still 



PREFACE xi 

smaller, yet quite large, of whom the author 
confesses himself to be one, who shrink 
more than most from "dumb forgetfulness." 
Of the rest I will only say that some were 
aimed chiefly at directing the thoughts, 
others chiefly at shaping the lives, of those 
who heard them. 

The author is as sensible as any one 
can be that he has not covered the whole 
ground. If there were no other obstacle, to 
do so would have required a much larger 
volume than this. But I trust that, as a 
whole, the book covers a much wider range 
of suggestion than might at first appear, 
converging, too, upon righteous character. 
And in my college pastorate of over forty 
years I have sought not more to lead my 
auditors to certain conclusions in thought 
than to create the atmosphere of love of 
truth. I would help them to think for 
themselves, and to correct the errors I 
might have made. I deem no right results 
really reached except as reached in this 



xii PREFACE 

spirit. The true preacher of Christ would 
lead his fellow men to One who is Himself 
the truth. 

?i 

The forms and faces of how many whom 
I have addressed rise distinctly before me ! 
As I said once to some of them, " I have 
not been effusive toward you, and I will 
not begin to be so now." But I cannot 
forget their kindness and generosity of 
heart — what hearts young men have! I 
count them valued friends, and I would 
fain greet them all. This may not be. I 
must remember, too, that this volurne is 
not designed for them only, but for that 
larger body of college graduates of whom 
they are a part, and, indeed, for a still 
wider public. For, all are called to give 
earnest heed to the subject of the book. 

To the Infinite Friend I commend those 
who heard and those who shall read. 

S. P. L. 

Hanover, N. H. 



CONTENTS 



Introduction, by President William J. Tucker xv 



I. Faith : Hindrances and Helps . 

II. True Manliness 

III. Gifts are for Service 

IV. Human Fame 
V. Loyalty to Truth 

VI. Christ and Modern Thought 

VII. The Transient and the Eternal 

VIH. Happiness : its Sources or Conditions 

IX. Easter : Life 

X. Reconciliation : A Chief Problem of 

Life 

XL Christian Agnosticism 

XIL "Life abundantly" 

XIII. Loyalty to Law 

XIV. Hope ..... 
XV. Duty 

XVI. Conventional Morality . 

XVII. Men have what They live for 

XVIII. Clouds and Rain . 

XIX. The Bread found again . 

Appendix 



IS 

35 

51 
69 

84 

100 

114 

132 

147 
162 
176 
188 
203 
217 

234 
250 
267 
284 
299 



INTRODUCTION 

The author of these sermons enjoys the 
distinction of having completed an active 
pastorate of forty years in a college church. 
I do not know a living minister upon whom 
the like distinction rests. 

The period covered by Dr. Leeds's pas- 
torate was one of intellectual and moral 
activity. No preacher of this period could 
ignore the issues raised by the civil war, or 
by the subsequent material development of 
the country, or by the incoming of theolo- 
gical inquiry and controversy, or if his lot 
was cast in a college community, by the 
sharp changes in the subject matter and 
methods of the higher education. Through- 
out his long term of service, and amid all 
the changes incident to it, Dr. Leeds kept 
pace with the growth of the mind and con- 
science with which he had to do. He made 
the personal advance essential to leader- 
ship. He kept himself so wisely informed 
of the progress of science and of religion 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

that he committed himself to no false or 
untenable position. In the words of the 
minutes adopted by the church upon his 
resignation, " In a church and community 
marked by very divergent opinions, strongly 
held and openly expressed on religious, 
social, and political subjects, he maintained 
his independence without compromise and 
without offense ; and bringing no reproach 
upon the cross of Christ, he exhibited to 
all an unselfish gentleness." 

The printed sermon cannot declare the 
personality of the preacher. Not even the 
quaint sentence, the kindling thought, or 
the evident striving of the spirit can tell 
just how the word was spoken. But the 
reader to whom these sermons are simply 
sermons will see on every page the intel- 
lectual hospitality, the fine temper, the 
spiritual insight, the assured faith, and the 
single purpose of the man who wrote them. 
Many who read these sermons will recall 
the preacher ; now and then one will recall 
a sermon as it was preached. Among the 
ten generations of college students who lis- 
tened to Dr. Leeds, there may be some who 
will for the first time respond in their matu- 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

rity to the truths here repeated ; there will 
be others who will bear witness, out of long 
experience, to their essential truthfulness. 
To none will these sermons seem out 
of date. Whatever memories they may 
awaken, they will be recognized as having 
a rightful claim upon all who are willing 
to think and who wish to believe. 

William Jewett Tucker. 

Dartmouth College, 
May 1 8, 1904. 



THE 

CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY 
OF LIFE 



I 



FAITH : HINDRANCES AND HELPS 

By faith Abraham — : By faith Isaac — : By faith Jacob. — 

HeB, Xi. 8, 20, 21. 

Jesus said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye be- 
lieve on him whom he hath sent. — John vi. 29. 

The patriarchs whom I have named I have 
chosen from among others mentioned in 
the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, in part 
because they were plain men. David was 
a king, Joseph was a great king's prime 
minister, Moses transcended any monarch. 
But these three were wanderers in a for- 
eign land, having no fixed home, dwellers 
in tents by one and another fountain, or in 
one and another grove. They are better 
exemplars for us, then, in some respects, 
than if they had occupied the high places 
of the earth. I only add, that from a simply 



2 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

natural point of view, — from such a point 
of view, then, as we were never meant to 
take, — their course does not seem a wise 
one; that of their kinsman, Lot, much 
more so. Commonly, no course that is to 
be fruitful in grand results appears quite 
wise at the time to the world around. Faith 
is almost always irrational in the eyes of 
a merely worldly wisdom. 

It was to descendants of these men that 
our Lord Jesus said, in answer to the in- 
quiry what they should do that they might 
work the works of God,^» — the works which 
God commanded them, — " This is the 
work " — the supreme work — *' of God, 
that ye believe on him whom He hath 
sent," i. e. receive me as your heaven-sent 
Leader and Redeemer. And this is the 
word to all later generations of all peoples, 
to us to-day and to each of us, — receive 
Christ Jesus as Saviour and Lord. To do 
this is the consummate manifestation of 
that faith which the patriarchs practiced, 
the faith which is described in the first 
verse of the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, 
like an inscription over the great entrance 
to Westminster Abbey. " Faith (I quote 



FAITH: HINDRANCES AND HELPS 3 

our American Revised Version) is assurance 
of things hoped for, a conviction of things 
not seen." 

I wish to speak briefly this morning 
of some of the obstacles and a few of the 
encouragements to that faith. 

One chief obstacle is that its objects are 
out of sight. To a great degree Faith says, 
To-morrow. The world says (or self, as it 
interprets the world, says), To-day. Abra- 
ham, Isaac, and Jacob " looked for a city 
whose builder and maker is God." The 
world says, " Here is a city, if not that city ; 
seek no farther ; rest and enjoy nowT This 
is one of the greatest hindrances to Faith. 
She confessedly lays chief stress on To-mor- 
row, while worldliness claims the right to 
say To-day. And we are so much like chil- 
dren — even if children of a larger growth 
— that we want our good things right off. 
Listen to Bunyan : " I saw, moreover, in 
my dream that the Interpreter took Chris- 
tian by the hand and led him into a little 
room where sat two little children, each 
one in his chair. The name of the eldest 
was Passion, and the name of the other 



4 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

Patience. Passion seemed to be much dis- 
contented, but Patience was very quiet. 
Then Christian asked, What is the reason 
of the discontent of Passion ? The Inter- 
preter answered, The governor of them 
would have him stay for his best things till 
the beginning of the next year, but he 
will have them all now, but Patience is 
willing to wait. Then I saw that one came 
to Passion and brought him a bag of trea- 
sure and poured it down at his feet ; the 
which he took up and rejoiced therein, and 
withal laughed Patience to scorn. But I 
beheld but a while, and he had lavished all 
away, and had nothing left him but rags. 
Then said Christian to the Interpreter, 
Expound this matter more fully to me. So 
he said : These two lads are figures ; Pas- 
sion, of the men of this world, and Pa- 
tience, of the men of that which is to come ; 
for as here thou seest. Passion will have 
all now, this year, that is to say, in this 
world, so are the men of this world; they 
must have all their good things now ; they 
cannot stay till the next year, that is, until 
the next world, for their portion of good." 
And yet, let us note as we go, it is not 



FAITH: HINDRANCES AND HELPS 5 

commonly true that To-day belongs to the 
world. Are the young men to whom it 
offers To-day — I will not say rich now — 
but are they likely to be so soon, if ever? 
For most of us, and for all of us most of 
the time, the world says To-morrow, just 
as much as faith does. " Ten, twenty, thirty 
years hence, young man, thou shalt be rich 
or famous." Well, even twenty years is not 
a very short way off. We have a much 
better prospect of heaven's treasure and 
heaven's fame — if we are Christ's disci- 
ples — by that time than we have of earthly. 
When the world says To-day, almost al- 
ways, if you will listen closely, you will 
note, however loud the tone, a little lack of 
distinctness on the second syllable. At all 
events, its To-day commonly proves To- 
morrow. " When your hair shall be at least 
tinged with gray, when your eyesight has 
become a little dim, when the pleasure that 
honor or money might give you is one half 
gone, when those for whose sake chiefly 
you desire it have lain down wearily to 
their last sleep, then you may — perhaps — 
have what you covet." And as I have said, 
long before that, you may be enjoying a 



6 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

safe treasure and eternal praise. Forty 
years hence there will be a great many rich 
and honorable men of those now before me, 
but they will be up there, most of them. 

And this is not all. Faith does own to- 
day in large degree, and to-morrow too. 
How, I will show presently when I speak 
of the encouragements to Faith. But here 
is a chief obstacle to it. The world claims 
the present, and we believe the world. 

Another chief obstacle is that Faith's 
objects are always invisible to the bodily 
eye, — when you get them you cannot see 
them, — while the world's objects are, or 
seem, palpable to the eye and touch. Gold 
— you can handle it ; you can put it into 
bags and weigh it. Applause — you can 
hear it; the plaudits of the crowd, the 
praise of associates, — best of all, the old 
comrades' congratulations, — you can hear 
them, almost feel them. Jesus' word, " Well 
done," — it is the spirit that will hear that, 
not the bodily ear. Men prefer the loud- 
toned voice, the glaring aspect of the world. 

And yet, is the world right in this, even .? 
Is it the gold that satisfies those who have 



FAITH: HINDRANCES AND HELPS 7 

it, except here and there a miser ? By no 
means. It is the power and the sense of 
power which its possession gives. Is it the 
audible applause that pleases ? Nay, it is 
that to which it only testifies ; and hence 
it is that the praise of a few dear friends, 
the praise of one dearest friend, is worth 
more to us than the loudest paeans of the 
multitude. So that, after all, the world 
really shifts its ground to that of Faith. 
But the world — as I have said, one's sinful 
self, misinterpreting or misusing the world 
— deceives men willing to be deceived. Its 
gifts are sure and they are here, it affirms, 
and we believe. 

One more hindrance I name, scarcely 
more than name ; the throng is on the 
world's side. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob are 
alone. The nations are around them in 
their harvest-covered fields or their firm- 
set cities, perish though they yet may and 
a Dead Sea sweep over them. 

Here, then, are obstacles to faith. Good 
men feel them. The power of the visible 
and the present, the influence of the great 
throng, I might add their own imperfec- 
tions, — Abraham felt them, no doubt, 



8 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

and doubtless even yielded to them at 
times. 

But yet Faith has its encouragements 
also. I will name two. As I have already 
said, Faith greatly owns to-day as well as 
to-morrow. The patriarchs had much in 
the present. There are two kinds of owner- 
ship, — the one when legally we hold pro- 
perty, the other when we rightfully en- 
joy, more or less, that which our fellow 
man legally holds. It is what we get out 
of things which makes us rich, not their 
bare possession. Your neighbor adds field 
to field, and builds larger barns, and re- 
ceives the proceeds of his toil and care; 
but you, too, enjoy his landscape, the dis- 
tant hills, the nearer pastures, the green 
meadows, the sweet-breathed cattle faring 
home at sunset, the song of birds, the hum 
of insects all day long ; these are for you 
also. So Faith gets a great deal out of the 
present and the visible, as she goes on- 
ward ; the more, that she does not impa- 
tiently crush their objects beneath her feet, 
as worldliness so often does. One does not 
need to forget God and heaven in order 



FAITH: HINDRANCES AND HELPS 9 

to watch a sunset, to look at the starry 
vault at night, or to ponder the lessons of 
history or be profoundly interested in the 
deeds of living heroes, to read with beat- 
ing heart the words of the poets, or to listen 
to the merry voices of children, or to enjoy 
friends or sweet home. If it is true that 
God makes His sun to rise on the evil as 
well as the good, it is as true that He 
makes it to rise on the good as well as the 
evil. Nature does not still her harmony as 
Christ's follower passes ; earth and sky do 
not lose their glories. Human life, so full 
of interest commonly, even when pathetic, 
does not part with its strange charm. No, 
indeed. Faith has a strong hold on to-day 
as well as to-morrow. 

But besides and more, all these things, 
to Faith, reflect the Heavenly Father, God. 
The thing which chiefly makes them val- 
uable, Faith has in a degree now. " God 
maketh His sun to rise on the evil and the 
good," men say, misquoting ; Jesus said, 
" Your Father who is in heaven " doeth it, 
and Faith repeats after him. My Father 
who is in heaven. There is all the differ- 
ence possible. The sunshine to the man of 



lo CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

the world means something pleasant, use- 
ful, or splendid ; to the Christian it means 
all this and a heavenly Parent too ; all this, 
and an infinitely loving and lovable heart 
besides. The world says To-day, and its 
to-day means to-morrow, or, more likely, 
never; but even when Faith says To-mor- 
row, its to-morrow begins in measure at 
once, and " coming events cast " something 
of their glory before. 

That is one encouragement to faith ; there 
is another of a quite different kind. Every 
good thing here below, as I have already 
hinted, bears witness to its value. The best 
points in the world's best things, we have 
seen, borrow directly from it. Every worthy 
exhortation to virtue is an argument for it. 
You cannot be what the world calls a vir- 
tuous or good man without acting on prin- 
ciples which, if not of faith already, would, 
consistently carried out, bring you into 
the ranks of Jesus Christ as your Leader. 
For a truly good man denies himself for 
goodness' sake, resists temptation, fights 
the evil nature within, turns his back on 
the multitude, and stands with the few or 
alone when he must. Jesus' follower does 



FAITH: HINDRANCES AND HELPS ii 

only one thing more, essentially, and, on the 
other hand, receives great helps. A willing- 
ness to ask for these great helps, indeed, is 
a chief part of that one thing more, for the 
Christian consecrates himself to receive 
from Christ quite as much as to do for 
Him. He gives up self — self-lordship — 
to a Lord and Leader infinitely wise and 
kind; and he gains, as I have just said, the 
spirit of Christ to sustain him and inspire 
him with hope and strength. 

It is a great encouragement to faith 
that there is no argument to manhood, to 
virtue, to wisdom, no argument for patri- 
otism or for philanthropy, no argument in 
any right direction, that does not inure to 
its aid. " Make the most of this life, of 
this world." To such an appeal as that 
even, Faith responds, " Yea, verily." Let 
the appeal but be worthily made, inter- 
preted in a way worthy of any honest, 
just, honorable person, and Faith heartily 
accepts it. It is not true that only the 
followers of Christ have to fight with evil 
within and without and to overcome it. 
Every one has a cross to carry. We go to 
Calvary, and we see three crosses there. It 



12 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

is not the All-righteous, All-holy, All-good 
alone who is upon one. And this may- 
serve as a parable to us ; daily, every man 
who lives justly and uprightly and kindly 
crucifies his lower and selfish nature. Our 
faith is helped greatly by the thought that 
every argument and appeal towards a right 
life, a wise life, a reasonable life, leads to 
the following and the fellowship of the 
Master, Jesus. His words are emphatically 
true, "This is the work of God, that ye 
believe on him whom He hath sent." 

In what I have been saying, I have given 
a glimpse at a reward of faith ; in the de- 
velopment of right character we have a 
reward as we go along. The patriarch went 
forth on his pilgrimage weak, comparatively 
untried, inexperienced ; he ended it, not in 
the possession of lands or houses, but with 
a soul trained to bear, to trust, and to obey. 

Christian brother ! You know not what 
strength you are gaining, what a blessing, 
therefore, you are receiving, even now. To 
yourself you seem weak indeed, for your 
ideal is continually rising, and that is a 
part of your reward. Yes, that is a part of 



FAITH: HINDRANCES AND HELPS 13 

your reward, that, as you read your Lead- 
er's words, His precepts grow in breadth; 
that as you ponder His life, His example 
seems more wonderful than once it did. 
Once you thought that if you kept the com- 
mandments you did well; you keep them 
now in measure, but you see more plainly 
now that love to God and man is the law's 
grand requirement. That is a part of your 
reward. You are going to a world where 
love reigns, and it is well that you should 
understand this thoroughly before you 
enter it. Day by day your vision is being 
cleared ; you know more, understand more, 
of duty's laws, of your Heavenly Father s 
will, than ever before. And more of Jesus 
as Helper and Leader and unwearied 
Friend do you discover ; that, that is a part 
of your reward. 

But the consummation of it, the fullness 
of it, who shall tell it here ? What mortal 
heart conceives it yet ? 

" After this I beheld, and lo, a great 
multitude, which no man could number, 
stood before the throne, and before the 
Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palms in 
their hands, and cried with a loud voice, 



14 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

saying, Salvation to our God and to the 
Lamb ! And one of the elders said unto 
me, These are they which came out of 
great tribulation and have washed their 
robes, and made them white in the blood 
of the Lamb. Therefore are they before 
the throne of God, and serve Him day and 
night in His temple. They shall hunger no 
more, neither thirst any more, neither shall 
the sun light on them nor any heat. For 
the Lamb which is in the midst of the 
throne shall feed them, and shall lead 
them " — their Leader still, you observe — 
" shall lead them unto living fountains of 
waters ; and God shall wipe away all tears 
from their eyes." 



II 

TRUE MANLINESS 1 
Quit you like men. — I. Cor. xvi. 13. 

The true hero is in a degree unnoticed in 
his own day. Surrounded by the crowd, 
obscured by the " Httle great men " of the 
time, he cannot receive, as indeed it is not 
well for him that he should receive, the 
appreciation which later ages may give. It 
is for this reason mainly that in seeking for 
examples our thoughts turn at once to the 
past. It may be, indeed, that a gifted author 
is right when he speaks of a class of men 
who walked the world with a more kingly 
mien two or three centuries ago than do 
any in this dusty present. I suspect, how- 
ever, that the difference is in seeming only, 

^ This sermon was preached first on the first Sunday of 
a new college year and during the Great War. Repeated 
twenty years later, a part was naturally omitted. It seems 
best to print it now as when originally delivered. For 
some it may revive old associations ; to others it may 
present a historic picture. 



i6 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

and that I have indicated the chief reason 
of the illusion. Romance and poetry, too, 
swell the praises and aggrandize the achieve- 
ments of the heroes that have gone. Yet 
because those men of the past are so well 
known, I select them as indicating a cer- 
tain high type of manhood to which I 
would ask your attention this morning. 
Sir Philip Sidney, and still more, though 
only because granted a longer life. Sir 
Walter Raleigh, are instances of men who 
united a high mental culture with lofty 
moral qualities. They were men of thought, 
and of achievement too ; and besides, they 
could suffer, when need was, patiently and 
even cheerily. In one word, they were com- 
plete men. 

I propose, then, to take a certain ideal 
of true manhood, not because it is the only 
one, but to give more definiteness to our 
thoughts. I wish to speak of a manliness 
which includes intellectual as well as moral 
culture. I desire to urge a heroism which 
works through a mental training such as it 
is not the privilege of most to enjoy. 

This ideal is not, I repeat, the only one. 
Far from it. Many are the heroes on whose 



TRUE MANLINESS 17 

" humble birth fair Science frowned." The 
fathers of many of us, the brothers, the 
friends, have exhibited a manhood which we 
should be only too glad to rival. But on this 
first Sunday of an academic year, when 
hundreds of young men begin or resume 
a long and careful course of education, I 
may be permitted to point out to such that 
path which they, especially, should tread, — 
that path which would be trodden by those 
to whom I have just alluded, were it their 
privilege. 

And even with these I would point a 
straiter way than might be expected. Not 
for a moment forgetting that a saintly vir- 
tue often exists in the cloister, it is not to 
a cloistered manhood that I would exhort, 
but to one of the open air in some great 
battlefield of life, one that would enable 
you, if need were, to go out into the actual 
battlefield where the patriot stands for his 
fatherland. For if I mistake not, in a highly 
civilized society we are in danger of incom- 
pleteness in this regard. Our literary men 
may be subtle in argument, copious in dis- 
course, felicitous in expression, and yet be 
wanting in a certain vigor of thought and 



i8 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

action, for whose sake we must repair to 
others educated only by the stern discipHne 
of life, — to the stout-hearted pioneer, to 
the " rough-and-ready " soldier. Ere we are 
aware, we may become like the Greeks of 
old, quick, sensitive, ingenious, mentally 
active, but enervate and indecisive and 
unmanly, the prey of the rude and virile 
Roman. 

We need, need everywhere in Christen- 
dom, and here as elsewhere, a class of men 
who may be described to many of you by 
the mention of a name, Arnold of Rugby, 
men of true piety, of cultivated minds, and 
of certain high moral qualities, as they may 
be called ; men like him of whom the poet 
speaks, — 

"... the elements 
So mixed in him, that nature might stand up 
And say to all the world, Behold a man ! " 

This is the ideal of manhood which I would 
commend to your regard now. 

As an important step toward its realiza- 
tion, I would speak first of that which is 
suggested by an apostle's words, " Glorify 
God in the body." 



TRUE MANLINESS 19 

This is not the place for a discussion of 
the means of health. Yet I believe I only 
carry out the scriptural injunction just cited 
and speak the sentiment of thoughtful men 
when I urge the proper observance of these. 
I do not say that health is a requisite to 
the manliness I speak of; the shattered 
hero in every age disproves it. But this, I 
think, may be affirmed : that health in early 
life, health until cares, labors, or sufferings 
have broken it, is an admirable basis for a 
true manhood. 

But it is more to my present purpose to 
say that health is very often impaired by a 
self-indulgence which is inconsistent with 
genuine manliness. There is a self-indul- 
gence in literary pursuits themselves. When 
the day's work is fairly done or in hopeful 
progress, and one is summoned to rest 
or to exercise, it may not be altogether or 
mainly the love of knowledge that still 
binds him to the study ; it may be the lik- 
ing for a certain kind of mental stimula- 
tion, as wrong though not as low as other 
kinds, or it may be an effeminate shrinking 
from physical activity, or both of these. To 
yield is self-indulgence, and self-indulgence 



20 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

will never make a hero. It is essentially- 
inconsistent with heroism. Moreover, it 
breeds habits of feeling and imagination 
discordant with the prompt and decisive 
activity which belongs to this ; it weakens 
the tone of one's nature, and makes a 
sickly sentimentalist and falsely named 
philanthropist instead of a healthy-minded 
benefactor of his race. Spend the hours 
that belong to the open air over the book, 
the pen, or the newspaper, and you become 
an unmanly critic of men whose courage 
and achievements you cannot hope .to emu- 
late. 

I speak thus the more readily because 
men of intellectual tastes and aspirations 
are in much peril on this point ; and more 
earnestly still, because much of the ex- 
cessive time spent by such men in confine- 
ment is devoted, not to that study which 
disciplines and enlarges and adorns the 
mind, but to an aimless reading of what 
can do neither. 

I only allude now to other forms of self- 
indulgence as injurious to health as to 
manliness. How many are sapping the 
foundations of both by them, fitting the 



TRUE MANLINESS 21 

body thus for treachery to the spirit when 
the hour of trial comes ; nay, fitting it to 
corrupt the spirit by nervous apprehen- 
sions and weaknesses ! If there is one 
who is not thus swayed by a diseased or 
decayed body, but rules it as its master, 
almost always is it because he has been 
wont so to rule it ; because, in other words, 
such a body is his by inheritance or in 
consequence of arduous labors; in some 
other way, at all events, than by self-indul- 
gence. 

Let health, then, be kept, and let it be 
cherished. The physical frame is God's 
work, "fearfully and wonderfully made." 
Most intimate is the connection between 
it and the soul. Let it be honored, that so 
we may glorify God in the body. 

I come now to that theme towards which 
my remarks even thus far have pointed, — 
the cultivation of the spirit. True manhood 
does not consist in occasional manly deeds, 
nor is it even manifested chiefly by such. 
It is not the fruit, directly, of the will. It 
is the product of high aspirations, aims, 
and principles. There must be an habit- 



22 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

ual cherishing of right sentiments and 
purposes. 

The faithful performance of duty, what- 
ever it may be, is of the highest conse- 
quence. 

The true man will, do his work. It may 
be hard ; work often is. It may be irksome ; 
work often is. It may be positively disa- 
greeable ; work often is. But he knows that 
duty is not an iota the less duty because 
hard or irksome or disagreeable, and he 
will do it. He has learned that things of 
value cost effort, and he expects to make 
effort. He may have been the child of 
ease, but in some way he has learned to 
toil patiently and earnestly. At any rate, 
his duty shall be done. And it shall all be 
done. It shall be done though there be 
none to applaud and none to observe. It 
shall be done though humble and its omis- 
sion of little apparent importance. It shall 
be done because it is duty, and therefore 
done well and cheerfully. 

Such a man will do what he undertakes 
to do. Not his work, perhaps, from any 
intrinsic claim ; he has assumed it, and 
now it shall be performed. He may be re- 



TRUE MANLINESS 23 

lied on. His engagements will be kept. 
Fidelity to himself, to the dictates of his 
judgment, the demands of his conscience, 
will avail when others would release him. 
The purpose formed in an impartial hour 
will not be broken in a moment of excited 
desire. Such a man will act up to his con- 
victions. Slow, it may be, in reaching them, 
he cannot fail in obeying them ; he " must 
obey God rather than man." Carry him 
where they will, he must yield to them. 
He cannot go with the multitude because 
it is the multitude ; he cannot surrender 
his conscience to a false esprit de corps ; he 
cannot be swept away by clamor, nor by 
flattery, nor by fear ; he must do right. Far 
from desiring singularity, he must, though 
alone, do right. 

I am well aware that I am uttering tru- 
isms. And yet I might say in an apostle's 
words, " I have not written these things 
because ye know not the truth, but because 
ye know it." Is it because they are truisms 
that almost any day may see them broken 
even among us who know them so well ? 
How many of us will say No clearly and 
emphatically to an unworthy proposition 



24 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

to-morrow, though that proposition be urged 
by the common voice, or will brush away 
the fallacies that cowardice or shallow com- 
plaisance may weave to darken our judg- 
ments ? 

Not long ago, when the vote was taken 
on Rebellion in a certain legislature or 
convention, one man dared to vote against 
it alone. Peril to property and to life, I 
know not how great, was at hand, but he 
said "Nay." Many ingenious pleas might 
have been framed to justify him in desert- 
ing his country's cause. Of what avail a 
single negative voice ? What good could 
he hope to accomplish } Or could not more 
good be done by going for a while with the 
majority ? might he not hope, for example, 
to retain an influence over many which in 
a calmer hour could be used for the Union.? 
But not so was our patriot " corrupted from 
the simplicity " of honor. No. Come what 
might. No. 

It would be fairly easy for us after such 
an example to stand firm in the same 
cause. But when our temptation comes, it 
will be in a case so different from any with 
which we are familiar that we shall deem 



TRUE MANLINESS 25 

ours " a peculiar case." It will be, perhaps, 
but a slight thing that our virtue is to yield. 
Our generosity, it may be, or our amiability 
will be appealed to. And all our little world, 
so will Satan say, awaits eagerly our com- 
pliance. When that hour comes, shall we 
dare to refuse ? 

There is a constant tendency to make 
duty conventional, to create obligation 
where there is none, to annul obligation 
real and solemn. Every large body of men 
is apt to have its fictitious virtues and vices. 
Following this false standard, one may do 
things from which in other relations he 
shrinks, may omit to do things which on 
no account would he fail in other relations 
to perform. Blessed is he who does not 
suffer his perceptions to be darkened, but 
with clear conviction acts firmly and stead- 
fastly up to the line of duty. He is a man. 

Let us give heed to the apostle's words, 
" Watch ye " against the guile of the crafty, 
" stand fast in the faith," in the great prin- 
ciples of truth and duty "quit you hke 
men," " be strong." 

Another point of highest consequence is 



26 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

the government of the passions and appe- 
tites. 

The passions crave their satisfaction in 
the present. The victory of manhood Hes 
in keeping the future as powerful over us 
as the present. As vivid it can seldom be, 
and if we wait to have it so, we must wait 
long indeed ; as controlling, it can be. For 
its objects are so grand as to compensate 
and more than compensate for their re- 
moteness. What is the red pottage to the 
birthright .f^ What is the ease, the safety, 
the applause of to-day to the rewards that 
follow manliness as certainly as the shadow 
follows the substance ? 'T is true that we 
are in the valley now, and that the hills 
and heights are far away. But so glorious 
are those mountain-tops where rests the 
sunshine all the day, and on which the very 
throne of God sometimes seems to stand, 
so distinct, too, is the sound at times of 
our Lord's coming chariot wheels, that as 
we walk the valley we need not forget the 
hills. 

Why is it, my friends, to follow up the 
figure, that in the loveliest plain our eyes 
turn often to the heights, if such there be, 



TRUE MANLINESS 27 

that bound it? It is because we were made, 
even in the lower range of our being, for 
more than we actually see ; because the 
mountains, unconscious as we may be of 
it, suggest to the mind more than we look 
upon. And so in our soul's higher range 
we were made for things greater far than 
this world supplies. Our nature is too 
broad to be satisfied with earth's gifts. 
For a little season we wear frames fitted to 
our present abode, that need things seen 
and palpable, and crave far more than they 
need. But we who wear these frames, we, 
ourselves, rich in faculties of thought and 
imagination, of affection, of conscience, and 
spiritual sensibility, need and crave what 
only an unseen and spiritual world can 
give. And therefore in such a world there 
are influences to counterbalance those of 
the more vivid present. In so far as the 
soul is worth more than the body, is the 
future fitted to be more potential than the 
present. 

But shall it be ? On the answer to the 
question depends our manhood. Children 
or men, which shall we he? Grown-up 
children or full-grown men ? The victory 



28 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

of manhood lies in realizing the future, — 
in governing, then, the appetites and pas- 
sions. 

Think, then, young men, may I not say 
to you ? think, when the next temptation 
comes to passion in some perhaps petty 
form, of the issue involved. The intoxicat- 
ing draught which good-fellowship invites, 
but which your own judgment and, per- 
chance, too, a mother's wish, forbids — on 
your treatment of it may hinge more than 
you suspect, — the question of your manli- 
ness. 

I name but one more point, and that 
closely connected with the one we have 
just been considering, — self-denial. By 
this I mean the renunciation of self-gratifi- 
cation, as a supreme end, in all its forms. 

To conquer the passions is one form 
of self-denial. But it includes much more 
than that, such as the giving up of one's 
will or the yielding of one's innocent pre- 
ference on right occasion. In some shape 
self-denial is necessary to a high manhood, 
for the entire life of every true man is 
more or less the practice of this virtue. 



TRUE MANLINESS 29 

There is an almost constant surrender of 
something, a daily taking up of the cross. 
Now it is ease, and again it is comfort, 
that is sacrificed. Now it is some slight 
gratification, and again it is some great 
happiness. It may be literary enjoyment 
or literary fame. It may be the prospect of 
wealth or of honor. It may be the society 
of those we love best. It may be the cher- 
ished plan of years, whose realization has 
awaited us as the Promised Land did the 
Jewish lawgiver, and as long, but can now 
be surveyed only from some far-off Pisgah's 
top. Our self-denial may be a frequent sur- 
render of things soon forgotten, or it may 
be a lifelong reHnquishment of that which 
we can never forget. 

And such is the rule of all true living, 
— a readiness to surrender to duty, that 
is, to God, what we prize most, a readiness 
often put to the test. It is " a hard saying," 
doubtless. It is often so hard to do right. 
But, my friend, would you be a man ? Be 
willing, then, to pay the price. 

Look about you at the material world, 
even, in which we dwell. It might have 
been made so that none would ever be 



30 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

hurt, — instead of rocks, down ; violets in- 
stead of briers ; zephyrs and not tempests, 
if we want such a world as that. But no such 
world is this of ours, but a rough world, 
a world where one must often take heed 
or he will be gravely hurt. Look, too, at all 
history, sacred or profane. Joseph and 
Moses and David and Daniel became what 
they were — how and where ? In dungeon 
and exile and battlefield and the lion's den 
— by self-denial, yea, suffering, in the cause 
of virtue and piety. How won Demosthe- 
nes his crown, and Caesar and Dante and 
Wickliffe and Knox and Luther and Wil- 
liam the Silent and Washington.^ With 
one voice they testify that earth's prizes as 
well as heaven's are bought with toil, pain, 
self-sacrifice. They gave up ease, they sur- 
rendered enjoyment, they yielded up them- 
selves, even, many of them, for such is the 
way of true manhood. 

" Quit you like men." From what in- 
spired lips did these words come? From 
those of one who had been beaten, stoned, 
imprisoned, thrice shipwrecked, who had 
hungered and thirsted often, and often 
been " in cold and nakedness," and inces- 



TRUE MANLINESS 31 

santly in peril ; from one assuredly who 
had a right to speak, and whose example 
teaches us what obedience to his exhorta- 
tion might involve. And as each succes- 
sive age and every succeeding hero repeats 
the exhortation, the story of each says. Be 
sure that it will cost you self-denial to be a 
man ! 

" Quit you like men." There was One 
who came into this world to be a man, 
even the pattern man. And what was his 
history } " The Son of man came not to 
be ministered unto, but to minister, and to 
give his life." " Wherefore, seeing we also 
are compassed about with so great a cloud 
of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, 
and the sin which doth so easily beset us, 
and let us run with patience the race that 
is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the 
author and finisher of our faith, who for 
the joy that was set before him, endured 
the cross, despising the shame." 

Have I discouraged any as I have thus 
spoken of the requisites to true manliness ? 
Let me remind you that this same Jesus 
tells us, " My yoke is easy and my burden 



32 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

light." And how can this be, do any ask? 
I have already said that there is a future 
which faith makes real. He can bring that 
future near. He can make the unseen real- 
ities visible to the soul. Walking with Him, 
we can quit ourselves as we ought. " By 
faith Moses forsook Egypt, not fearing the 
wrath of the king ; for he endured as seeing 
Him who is invisible." Yes, there are reali- 
ties, realities alone worthy of the name, and 
in their contemplation duty may be plea- 
sure and self-denial privilege. 

I said when I began that I should urge 
to a peculiar type of manhood, and I have 
aimed to point out some of its qualities. Is 
it not literally true that we were never 
summoned to its realization so emphati- 
cally as now.f* Into the turmoil of our 
marts and the retirement of our cloisters, 
when there was danger by no means slight 
of our becoming degenerate sons of noble 
sires, danger that our men of trade would 
be absorbed and lost in what they called 
the practical, and our men of scholarship 
sink into enervate and dreamy students, 
the voice of the Lord of hosts has come, 



i 



TRUE MANLINESS 33 

saying, " Rise up, go forth, quit you like 
men ! " As one sometimes in a mountain 
ride turns suddenly a hill and lo ! as if a cur- 
tain had risen, a vast panorama of valley 
and plain and river and height and town is 
before him, so a quick turn in our coun- 
try's history has brought us face to face 
with realities ; the things that hemmed in 
our vision are gone, the apparent has given 
place to the actual, and before us are the 
verities of national honor, loyalty, and free- 
dom. And now what need we more than 
men such as I would persuade you to be, 
men in whom the mental serves and is 
quickened by the moral, and to whom the 
physical is the ally of both ? Perhaps this 
time may aid in the education of such men. 
I know not but that it is an excellent thing 
for our people that the babble of mere poli- 
ticians and demagogues is lost for a season 
in the din of men whose vocation is to do ; 
for God is calling for men to serve Him. 

To-day a quarter of a million of our 
brethren are in arms to sustain our coun- 
try's government and institutions. Is there 
no voice for us who do not and ought not 
to go to the field ? Have we no service to 



34 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

render ? Are we not joyfully bound, in our 
calling, to aspire to even loftier achieve- 
ment and higher self-devotion ? Come, O 
Captain of our salvation ! inspire us with 
thy spirit, that we may quit us like men ! 



Ill 

GIFTS ARE FOR SERVICE 

The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned, 
that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that 
is weary. — Isaiah 1. 4. 

Gifts and opportunities are for service, 
that their possessor may help his less for- 
tunate fellows ; this is an obvious sugges- 
tion of these words. They are not for his 
own enjoyment merely or mainly. They 
are not bestowed that one may win ad- 
miration. Still less are they given as wea- 
pons with which to beat down his neighbor 
for his own aggrandizement. God is not 
glorified thus, and we were made to glorify 
Him. " Talents " of whatever kind are dis- 
tributed among men by Him for His work. 
That is to be the object of the recipients; 
and their supreme happiness, so far as these 
can give them, is to be found in so using 
them. God's glory, not man's exaltation, is 
their end. Self-serving is not the way to 
happiness, even our own. There is no 



36 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

surer, and commonly no shorter, road to 
misery. Would you be truly and steadily 
happy, forget yourself. Live for self, and 
full soon you will say, " All is vanity and 
vexation of spirit." " I made me great 
works ; " "I made me," for my own plea- 
sure, " great works ; I builded me houses ; " 
"so I was great, and increased more than 
all that were before me in Jerusalem ; then 
I looked on all the works that my hands 
had wrought, and on the labor that I had 
labored to do ; and behold, all was vanity 
and vexation of spirit and there was no 
profit under the sun." To seek great things 
for one's self, too, leads one into temptation. 
We have enough of that in any path for 
the purpose of discipline, but in this many, 
mighty, and unsuspected are the adversa- 
ries that lie in wait. For with great tempta- 
tion come how commonly sin and sorrow. 

Gifts and opportunities, then, are for ser- 
vice — God's service and man's. " Whoever 
will be chief among you," said the Master, 
" let him be your servant ; " and again, 
" He that is greatest among you shall be 
your servant ; " or, as our text has it more 
specifically, " The Lord God hath given me 



GIFTS ARE FOR SERVICE 37 

the tongue of the learned, that I should 
know how to speak a word in season to 
him that is weary." To fill the ears of mul- 
titudes and win their favor by long and 
" plausive " speeches ? Nay, to speak " a 
word " — a word only when more may not 
be — " to him," a single, solitary soul, who 
needs it, even as our Lord did to the 
Samaritan woman. " We that are strong," 
said the strong Apostle Paul, " ought to 
bear the infirmities of the weak, and not 
to please ourselves." It is the same prin- 
ciple in another form : strength designed 
by the Infinite Giver of strength to help 
weakness; strength set over against or 
near weakness, not to trample it under foot 
and exalt itself, but to help it, lift it up, 
impart of itself to it. Such is the Divine 
Order. 

How unlike is man's way we know but 
too well. The history of nations — nay, 
what, often, is the story of powerful, fa- 
mous, or rich individuals but that of him 
who, with many flocks and herds, snatched 
his poor neighbor's " one little ewe lamb " ? 
But how far away this, how utterly differ- 
ent from what I have called the Divine 



38 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

Order. Strength given on purpose that 
it may help weakness; the snow-topped 
mountains set up, that down their sides may 
flow streams to cheer and fructify plain 
and valley. 

Examining this truth somewhat in de- 
tail, we note that it is a noble principle and 
ennobling. It exalts life ; it transforms life ; 
and it exalts and transforms character. As 
long as one's aims and desires find their 
centre in one's self, they are inevitably 
petty, more or less. We may build never 
so largely, plant gardens that shall excel 
Solomon's, — in a word, execute the am- 
plest designs, and yet, I say, there will be 
an aspect of littleness about all. Men often 
feel this so much that when they do great 
things for themselves they seek relief in 
the thought that others, also, will gain by 
their work; they speak of it, for instance, 
as a pubhc benefit. This is not always 
because they feel bound to give account 
to others of their doings, but because 
something in themselves demands it; they 
wish to breathe a freer air than is to be had 
in self-pleasing only. No matter what the 



GIFTS ARE FOR SERVICE 39 

work performed is, — a speech that saves a 
nation, a book that moulds an age, — if the 
doer is self-centred he cannot be fully sat- 
isfied for long. 

But when one truly, practically recog- 
nizes the principle in question, of strength 
given that we may help the weak, wealth, 
learning, eloquence, opportunity bestowed 
that their possessor may aid the poor, igno- 
rant, dumb, unfavored, a new and delight- 
ful sense of freedom comes. The eagle is 
no longer fastened to a stake. It rises into 
a larger atmosphere, its field of vision is 
widened, and it becomes conscious of new 
powers and grander destinies. 

And surely, my friends, we need some- 
thing to broaden and ennoble this mortal 
life for us. It has so many small cares and 
duties that, ere we are aware, we may be 
narrow in our views and low in our aims. 
What shall save us.'* The same divine 
wisdom which has answered that question 
for the true mother, — the type, you know, 
of those who are burdened with such cares 
and duties, — answers it for us all. She 
finds deliverance in living for others, and 
for God in them ; her soul is enlarged by 



40 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

that ; the contracted nursery expands 
around her as she looks forward to her 
children's future and her Lord's glory; 
" losing her life," as she might seem to do^ 
she " saves it," according to His promise. 
And so for every one of us there is free- 
dom, there are the blessings of freedom, in 
the practical knowledge of the grand truth 
we are considering. It proves a noble 
truth, for it ennobles. 

But note again, that to live thus is 
Christ-like — is Christ-like, I say, and how 
much that means! The shaping principle 
of our Lord's life was just this. " The Son 
of man came," He said of himself, "not to 
be ministered unto, but to minister," to 
wait upon others, to serve them. To im- 
part of His own store, — this was His work; 
to impart knowledge, comfort, help ; and 
more, to give ideals to the low-minded and 
higher ideals to the high-minded, and mo- 
tive, blessed motive to all. 

We cannot separate Him altogether from 
ourselves and say that in every respect He 
had a peculiar work to do, so that His life 
furnishes no model for our own : a sorrow- 
ful thing if we could say it, for His work. 



GIFTS ARE FOR SERVICE 41 

in large degree, was to show us by His life 
how to live, ourselves. He had, it is true, 
an extraordinary work to perform, and 
many even of the details of His task are 
inimitable by most of us, but its great 
principles are expressly for us ; even the 
grand motive of His supreme sacrifice is 
for us, for we read, " Lo, I come to do Thy 
will, O God." It may never be true of us 
as of Him that 

" Cold mountains and the midnight air 
Witnessed the fervor of (our) prayer," 

nor that 

" The desert (our) temptations knew, 
(Our) conflict, and (our) victory too ; " 

nor, quite likely, if His own work were to 
be done now, would all this be true of 
Himself. But fealty and obedience to the 
Father and helpfulness to our Father's 
children may be and are to be ours. 

But observe still again that, as this prin- 
ciple is noble and ennobling, and to live 
thus is Christ-like, so also it is, in other 
ways, a blessed one. " It is more blessed 
to give than to receive." These are words 
of our Saviour, I will not say indorsed, 
but quoted by, the Apostle Paul. Remem- 



42 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

bering who uttered them and who repeated 
them, we may well give them heed. And 
they are true words, words most emphat- 
ically true. Many may feel, like the old 
heathen, " A fool the giver, the receiver 
blest." But we know better; even some 
heathen could have taught us better. Of 
course it is not always more agreeable to 
give than to receive, unless to a proud man, 
and it is innocently natural to enjoy a 
token of our friends' thoughtfulness or 
regard. But true giving, giving in a right 
spirit, involves that in the soul which mere 
receiving does not. This is comparatively 
external ; usually it cannot reach as great 
a depth as right giving comes from. Then 
again, let us not forget the divine reward 
of genuine liberality, — a larger heart, a 
still greater disposition to give, until we 
are ready to give ourselves, if it may be, 
and so gain a still greater likeness to God 
and Christ. 

Gifts and opportunities for service su- 
premely, — such is the Divine Order, and 
our true happiness itself is to be found 
mainly in so using them. I come this 



GIFTS ARE FOR SERVICE 43 

morning, my friends, to lay this truth before 
you. Applicable as it is to every one, I do 
so with a sense which we all feel of its 
special, or at least more evident, adapted- 
ness to most of you. 

But some things in our time seduce very 
many from the narrow, yet noble, Christlike 
and blessed way. I refer but in small part 
to ambition, political or other. For one, I 
am glad that there are those who are will- 
ing to assume the onerous duties of public 
life, and I rejoice that so many competent 
and honorable men are presented for our 
suffrages, first and last. When men con- 
scious of their adaptation to one or another 
position, and well aware of its responsibil- 
ities, consent to occupy it, or even aspire 
honorably to it, there is no occasion for re- 
proach, but rather for hearty approval. It 
could be wished that more such would as- 
pire thus. 

But if under the influence of a desire for 
self-aggrandizement, they are in the wrong 
path. They may secure what they wish, and 
they may do much useful work, but they are 
out of the Divine Order. Nor can they do 
all that they ought to do, for they have lost 



44 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

that sense of trusteeship which is indispen- 
sable to right service in a public career. 
They may, indeed, from motives of their 
own, aim to please, but they are not, con- 
sciously and of set purpose, trustees for 
their fellows, administering the duties of 
office for their good, ready to offend, if 
need be, in the faithful performance of 
their duty. I will only say of ambition 
of another kind, a kind against which our 
text more particularly warns us, that many 
need to be on their careful guard against 
it. We are to use intellectual gifts and 
acquisitions as the Lord's stewards, not for 
our own ends, but to help and serve His 
creatures. 

But a stronger, I mean a more general, 
misleading influence in our time is the love 
of money. Here again, indeed, virtue and 
education can do much good. They can 
direct to the wise and beneficent outlay of 
one's gains ; and virtue, certainly, can take 
care that only right means shall be con- 
sciously adopted in getting wealth. Yet 
neither virtue alone, nor virtue and educa- 
tion together, are adequate against a wrong 
principle, — the hottest fire will not be 



GIFTS ARE FOR SERVICE 45 

enough in midwinter with a window open, 
— and the wrong principle in this case is 
neglect of the truth that gifts and oppor- 
tunities are for service. We belong to a 
vast human family, and we cannot shake 
ourselves free from its demands if we would. 
" As every man hath received the gift, 
even so minister the same one to another 
as good stewards of the manifold grace of 
God." At the head of that family is our 
Lord Christ. He endows us for His work, 
not ours. Our own blessedness itself, as we 
have seen, is to be found in serving Him, 
that is, mainly, serving His. With wealth, 
as with other things, even a human wisdom 
teaches that 

" Heaven does with us as we with torches do, 
Not light them for themselves." 

And the Master says, speaking of the man 
who planned to pull down his barns and 
build greater and there bestow his fruits and 
his goods, and whom God called "fool," 
" So is he that layeth up treasure for him- 
self, and is not rich toward God." 

But there is a more ensnaring influence 
to most than the desire of wealth. For 
most never aspire to riches, however much 



46 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

they prize them. Men start out in life, as 
a rule, under the necessity of getting a 
living, and a livelihood is the necessary aim 
of most till the end. But this in itself in- 
nocent endeavor becomes the decoy with 
which almost all of us are caught, unless 
we cautiously beware. By this not only the 
man who at length acquires riches is com- 
monly entangled, but alas ! a very great 
host of us beside. We miss the great truth 
that all gifts and all opportunities are for 
service. Self-serving takes its occasion with 
most, I apprehend (I do not forget its 
prime cause, in the heart), — takes its oc- 
casion, I say, from a necessity of life, and 
then weaves its spider's web about the whole 
man, until all his powers, — his special 
gifts of intellect, if such he has, his attain- 
ments, his abilities and possessions of what- 
ever kind, — he regards as completely his 
own, to do with as he will, to get pleasure 
out of, to get honor from, assuredly to use 
for his own family exclusively. How brightly 
does the spider's web glisten ! So go edu- 
cated men with the rest. So go Christian 
men and women how often. And all the 
time the Lord God is saying, " Seekest 



GIFTS ARE FOR SERVICE 47 

thou great things for thyself ? I say unto 
thee, Seek them not." 

Who will not sympathize with the brave 
youth who has his own way in the world 
to make, and means " by God's good grace " 
to make it? See how obstacles are met 
and overcome. See how, to use Cicero's 
beautiful illustration, the resisting waves 
are forced to help the bold rower. He 
triumphs, he reaches the shore, he climbs 
the heights, praise and honor are his, quite 
likely he gains the " tongue of the learned." 
Let him not forget the message of his 
Father in heaven through the humble but 
unfaltering prophet of Israel, " The Lord 
God hath given me what I have that I may 
help and bless, or speak a word in season 
to him that is weary," that I may tell him, 
perhaps, where true strength is to be found, 
and true and certain success, and may as- 
sure him from the same prophet, " They 
that wait upon the Lord," obeying His 
voice to live not for themselves but for 
Him and His, "shall renew their strength; 
they shall mount up with wings as eagles ; 
they shall run and not be weary ; they shall 
walk and not faint." 



48 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

But is this practical ? Is this practical ? 
Nothing else is ! All other ways are ways 
of failure. They must be, for those who go 
in them sin against conscience, against 
love, and against Christ ; they sin against 
Christ's words and Christ's example; and 
it is He " for whom all things were cre- 
ated," and in whose interest and His king- 
dom's interest all things exist. Self-pleasing 
and self-seeking must break down against 
the throne of His majesty. A transient 
success, if it comes, must end in final dis- 
aster. " The stars in their courses fight 
against " selfishness, and so does their 
Maker. 

There is a sense, an important sense, in 
which one may make the most of both 
worlds — this and that which is to come ; 
of this world, " for," as said God's prophet, 
" the eyes of the Lord run to and fro 
throughout the whole earth to show Him- 
self strong in behalf of those whose heart 
is perfect toward Him ; " and Jesus Christ 
has himself said, " Seek first the kingdom 
of God and His righteousness, and all 
these things shall be added unto you." 
This, even here ; but of that other future 



GIFTS ARE FOR SERVICE 49 

world, the joys, riches, and honors of this 
are but shadows, faint and dim, of its glory. 

It was on a day of spring several years 
ago that I stood in ancient Athens on that 
spot where the greatest of Greek orators 
had once swayed his countrymen, and 
where in particular he had spoken in lan- 
guage immortal " for the crown," the golden 
crown, and I read there some of his burn- 
ing words and recalled his success. The 
landscape was wonderful. The distant sea, 
the intervening plain, the surrounding hills, 
viewed in that transparent air, had a strange 
power, and conspired with the marble ruins 
of temples and the rest to bring the glories 
of the past and of the day so memorable 
for Demosthenes distinctly and thrillingly 
before me. Charged to the brim, I passed 
then to another height on which St. Paul 
had stood, and, in the face of critical, cap- 
tious, scornful hearers and the idols they 
worshiped, had declared the one true God. 
I read there from my Testament his words 
and recalled that scene. I saw him alone, 
despised, with no applauding friends, sus- 
pected, endangered; and then with that 



50 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

picture fully before me, those words of his 
a few years later came rushing upon my 
mind, " I have fought a good fight, I have 
finished my course, I have kept the faith, 
henceforth there is laid up for me a crown ! " 
O Demosthenes, the Jew has won the 
crown ! 

The glories of the Greek faded from my 
mind, and Paul was now the victorious 
combatant. I had no longer tears of sym- 
pathy, but only those of joy. The golden 
diadem of the Greek was but a type, poor 
and evanescent, of that incorruptible one 
to be forever worn by the blest saint 



IV 

HUMAN FAME 

For he (Solomon) was wiser than all men ; than Ethan the 
Ezrahite, and Heman, and Chalcol, and Darda, the sons of 
Mahol. — I. Kings iv. 31. 

Who these men were, Ethan and Heman 
and Chalcol and Darda, we do not know, 
nor even when they lived. Some have con- 
jectured that Ethan and Heman were the 
singers whose names are mentioned in 
the fifteenth chapter of I. Chronicles and 
who were of the tribe of Levi ; others, with 
more probability, that they were descend-, 
ants of Judah, mentioned in the second 
chapter of the same book. Or were they 
Levites adopted into the tribe of Judah, 
as some have supposed ? And was it they 
who wrote the eighty-eighth and eighty- 
ninth Psalms, which bear the names, re- 
spectively, of Heman and Ethan? All is 
uncertain. And of Chalcol and Darda 
there is still more room for conjecture. 
Reading the Scriptures, we light upon 



52 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

these names, as one in traversing some 
ancient land comes suddenly upon a time- 
worn, weather-stained column, and finds 
an inscription recording an unknown name 
or event of thirty centuries ago. In a nar- 
ration of the greatness of Solomon we 
have this simple statement, a statement 
whose full import was doubtless familiar to 
those who first read it: " For he was wiser 
than all men; than Ethan the Ezrahite, 
and Heman, and Chalcol, and Darda, the 
sons of Mahol." This is their only record, 
and here they are mentioned only as foils 
to another man. 

In their generation they uttered their 
sententious wisdom, and their happy say- 
ings passed from mouth to mouth, becom- 
ing in some cases, no doubt, proverbs 
among their people ; proverbs, perhaps, 
which the traveler hears quoted to-day in 
the East, or which, perchance, are repeated 
among ourselves. Their decisions of knotty 
questions, their judgments in difficult cases 
of duty, their maxims for the conduct of life, 
were the delight and admiration of their 
day, as they themselves were the pride and 
joy of the father from whom they sprung ; 



HUMAN FAME 53 

and their name and fame were diffused 
among men. Their names we have still, 
but their fame, what is it ? 

We are reminded of another and very 
similar example in " the Seven Wise Men " 
of Greece, who lived at least four hundred 
years later. Who all these were is not quite 
certain ; and of any of them, even the most 
eminent, but a few sayings, and these of 
doubtful authenticity, are preserved. What 
little we know of the philosophy of Thales, 
who leads the van in the history of Greek 
thought, is in words not his own. And 
what shall we say of those sages of an 
earlier time who wfere the light of Egypt, 
or whose maxims were on every tongue in 
India, but who had not even the fortune to 
have it recorded of them that some one 
else was wiser than they ? In times later, 
much later, how many have there been to 
whom the title of " wise man " might not 
unjustly be applied, but whose memory has 
long since faded! 

Shall we say, then, that these men lived 
in vain ? that " Ethan the Ezrahite, and 
Heman, and Chalcol, and Darda, the sons 
of Mahol," might as well have never lived ? 



54 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

Not SO. For as Solomon is reported to 
have said, " I have accomplished things 
unhoped for, and no work is in vain." 
Their wisdom has been incorporated with 
the world's wisdom. If their sayings are 
not still current, yet they exerted an influ- 
ence on their contemporaries and immedi- 
ate successors at least. They shaped the 
judgments of men, they elevated human 
morality, they rebuked and restrained ty- 
rants and demagogues, they made the 
world more tolerable to live in. In saying 
this, I do not forget the frequent impotence 
of wisdom, proverbial and other. Neverthe- 
less, the words and lives of sages have 
moulded human thought and action. If 
we are not often guided by them directly, 
they have so entered into our sentiments 
as to exert a real though unconscious in- 
fluence over us. A single happy decision 
in casuistry, a single high-minded deci- 
sion on the claims of veracity, has long 
stood like a friendly beacon to direct the 
course of some, at least, and when the name 
of him who built the lighthouse has been 
forgotten the light has shone on ; and often 
when time has swept all away, men have 



HUMAN FAME 55 

learned the true course to steer and needed 
the kindly warning no longer. To-day 
" Thermopylae is no longer Thermopylae 
except in the pages of Herodotus," we are 
told, " and what was once a narrow defile 
of a few yards has been extended into a 
broad and swampy plain." And yet the 
name of Thermopylae is not lost, but still 
animates patriots ; and if it were lost, the 
heroism that met and stayed the Persian 
hordes has kindled the courage of men 
ever since: of it even we are heirs. And 
what is true of noble deeds is true also of 
noble words, and " some words are battles." 
Our lives, quite likely, are not altogether 
the same as they would have been but for 
Pittacus and Bias and Cleobulus and the 
rest of the Greek Seven, or for Ethan and 
Heman and Chalcol and Darda. " Know 
thyself" was written, according to Pliny, 
in letters of gold on the front of the tem- 
ple at Delphi, at the direction of Chilon, 
one of the Seven Sages of Greece. If the 
wisdom of the saying is really less than 
has been thought, yet it was not spoken to 
no purpose. It will be cited, and it will 
even be applied, in ages to come, as it has 



56 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

been in the long ages that have already 
passed since the very temple on which it 
was inscribed has so completely perished 
that " not a vestige now remains." 

What is true of single declarations, coun- 
sels, sayings, is true also on a larger scale. 
Aristides' life is not as if it had not been. 
The laws of Solon do their work as truly 
as the Pandects of Justinian, and the Pan- 
dects of Justinian do theirs as truly as the 
Code Napoleon. Aristotle's power is felt 
to-day as well as Lord Bacon's. Cicero 
sways us as well as Burke. And to refer 
to instances of a still nobler wisdom, nobler 
because it sought the highest ends with 
means thereto adapted, the patriarch who 
looked, perhaps, upon the pyramids incites 
our faith as truly as the apostle to the Gen- 
tiles, and he, though eighteen hundred 
years have passed since he died, surely 
inspires our living quite as much as any 
more recent saint whom we have personally 
known. All, then, of the wise who have 
gone before, and all of the wise who may 
be contemporary with us, have made, or 
are making, their contribution to the sum 
of human welfare. By deed or by word, by 



HUMAN FAME 57 

obvious effort or by the silent influence of 
example, they have done their part. We 
are the heirs of each lofty speech, of each 
noble act, of each pure life that the ages 
have enjoyed ; and although the influence 
of most of them on any one of us is too 
slight to be computed, let us not forget how 
many, like ourselves, have reaped and will 
reap the benefit Ethan and his brethren, 
though long dead, yet speak; and while 
the wisdom of a greater than they is felt 
by us, even as that of a still " greater than 
Solomon " is felt, yet we cannot say, and 
we ought not to think, that the sons of 
Mahol lived for naught. 

Low views of life are false views. Low 
views of human capacity, power, and influ- 
ence are false views, and are always to be 
strenuously resisted. They are the fruit of 
sensualism oftener than of reflection, and 
never of just reflection, but spring rather 
from the disappointment of unreasonable 
hopes. Pascal's famous words deserve fre- 
quent repetition : " Man is but a reed, the 
weakest in nature, but he is a thinking 
reed. It is not necessary that the entire 
universe arm itself to crush him. A breath 



58 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

of air, a drop of water, suffices to kill him. 
But were the universe to crush him, man 
would still be more noble than that which 
kills him, because he knows that he dies ; 
and the universe knows nothing of the ad- 
vantage it has over him." Let us not talk 
thoughtlessly, though we should talk rever- 
ently, of our Hmited and finite condition ; 
we sustain conscious relations to the abso- 
lute God and to infinite duration. 

But there is another thing to be said on 
our theme, and he whom our text declares 
to have been wiser than Heman and his 
brothers suggests it : " If thou art wise," he 
says, " thou art wise for thyself." Besides 
the influence which a man's wisdom exerts 
over others, there are blessings of which 
he alone partakes. Even of a much lower 
wisdom, this is true in an eminent degree ; 
for although in this case it cannot be denied 
that, as Solomon says, " he that increaseth 
knowledge increaseth sorrow," yet there is 
a profounder pleasure. Doubtless it was an 
extreme saying of Samuel Johnson, that 
" a desire of knowledge is the natural feel- 
ing of mankind, and every human being 
whose mind is not debauched will be will- 



HUMAN FAME 59 

ing to give all that he has to get know- 
ledge." This last, I say, is too strongly put, 
but certain it is that in at least the acquir- 
ing of knowledge there is a joy deeper than 
the sorrow which that brings. And in 
wisdom (as distinguished from knowledge) 
surely the possessor must find a peculiar 
happiness. The truly wise man, the man 
who lives in fair degree by the good max- 
ims he holds to, whose daily practice gives 
a louder and more constant utterance to 
the results of his observation than his 
tongue, must have a pleasure all his own. 
The future may not know his name, his 
neighbors may refuse to give heed to him, 
his wisdom may seemingly die with him, 
but he is " wise for himself," and of that 
happiness nothing can deprive him. The 
wisdom in which Solomon found grief was 
of a lower nature than this, and even 
in that he might have found less with a 
wiser heart. I say with a wiser heart, for 
even some heathen might have told him 
what heathen Plato said long afterwards, 
that " all knowledge apart from justice and 
other virtue appears to be craftiness, not 
wisdom." And if Chalcol and Darda had 



6o CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

the heart of wisdom, they may have even 
enjoyed more in this world than the more 
famous sage. For assuredly that wisdom 
which is the highest, which chooses the 
noblest ends and their appropriate means, 
brings joy with it ; a joy so great that it 
can sustain us in the midst of earthly sor- 
rows. 

We may not say, then, that the sages of 
the past have been wise for naught. It is 
not with lamentations, not with comments 
only on the vanity of all human things, 
that we are to read our text. This were 
especially unfitting in those so favored as 
we, to whom even this world's course is 
illumined by a light from above and be- 
yond it. 

And yet it were doing a kind of vio- 
lence to ourselves, if we should forbid our 
thoughts to rest at all on the moral which 
our text points, " For Solomon was wiser 
than all men ; than Ethan the Ezrahite, 
and Heman, and Chalcol, and Darda, the 
sons of Mahol." When the glory of one of 
undoubted and extraordinary gifts like Sol- 
omon is enhanced by naming expressly 



HUMAN FAME 6i 

certain other men, and when the very 
names of these men have perished except 
as thus recorded, it would be an affectation 
as unworthy of Christians as of any to 
refuse to see the stain which is left upon 
human fame. 

For not these men only are forgotten, 
but how many others ! Read the histories 
and biographies which earlier times have 
left us, and note how many are highly com- 
mended, and not only this, but so described 
that we are confident they deserved the 
praise, of whom we know absolutely no- 
thing. In each great crisis of affairs there 
has almost always been at least one emi- 
nent person now all but unknown, entitled 
to a fame as enduring as that of any of his 
associates. But not seldom has the repute 
of several of them outlived his. Even if he 
has observed that prudent prescription that 
" moderate councilors must be not less in 
earnest than vehement ones, for seeming 
insincerity is often excused to passion but 
never to moderation," he has not escaped 
this fate. And in more quiet times, how 
easily are the gifted forgotten, or their 
memory mingled with that of ten thousand 



62 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

others of justly evanescent reputation. We 
see this verified in our national history 
already. The name of Livingston, for in- 
stance, borne by at least three men eminent 
as signers and even drafters of the De- 
claration of Independence, framers of the 
Constitution, prominent in other most re- 
sponsible positions, — how completely is it 
confounded with the names of multitudes 
who deserve no special recollection. (Three 
votes out of one hundred were cast for one 
of them for the new American " Hall of 
Fame.") The same is true of Clinton. 

In fine, how few have been those who, 
however applauded, and justly, in their own 
day, are now remembered. For I do not 
deem those " remembered " who are only 
entered on the pages of a biographical dic- 
tionary. Of the great doers of the world, 
we have Moses and Cyrus, Alexander and 
Caesar, as the most conspicuous in a roll 
not long that ancient history gives us ; and 
of the great writers, after passing over the 
few of Holy Writ, Homer leads no large 
company, and their works are applauded 
rather than read. In truth, there are too 
many able men in the various departments 



HUMAN FAME 63 

of human activity, let us gratefully say, for 
their names to be perpetuated. Too many 
sages have uttered their maxims, too many 
philosophers have speculated in physical or 
metaphysical science, too many statesmen 
have ruled nations, too many generals have 
directed campaigns, too many poets, ora- 
tors, historians, and the rest have wrought 
in literature, for their memories to be really 
preserved. They are like the stars of the 
firmament, of which eighty thousand, we 
are told, are visible ; they are recorded in 
the astronomer's lists, but the most learned 
astronomer does not know them all. Each 
may do a useful work for us, but we cannot 
stay to acknowledge it. If in its own sphere 
each is a sun, we, to whom its light, per- 
haps, has been years in coming, must seem 
indifferent to its very name. And so, while 
some departed wise men or great men have 
escaped the general wreck, and of some a 
few anecdotes are saved, even these are 
entirely unknown to most and by exceed- 
ingly few really cared for. 

And why, indeed, should the world re- 
member the wise or great or famous, even 
if they were not nearly so numerous as 



64 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

they are ? I would not depreciate their 
merits ; I would not attempt to decide how 
much many or most of them owed to op- 
portunity, or how little if at all superior to 
their fellow-men, on the whole, they were ; 
it is an unworthy task, and let us rather 
acknowledge and rejoice to acknowledge 
our obligation to them. It is well for us, 
also, to have lofty ideals, and he does us no 
kindness who persuades us that they have 
never been realized. Often he gives us but 
partial truth at best, and partial truth is 
often more false than error itself. No, let 
us, rather, cherish the memories of those 
who have gone before. But none the less, 
the world cannot be expected to do this for 
many. It has its own cares, its own present 
labors, its living leaders or exponents. We 
lose greatly if we forget the Fathers of the 
Republic, yet we, too, have our battles to 
fight; we have our statesmen to observe 
and be grateful to, and we have to listen to 
orators whose lips are not yet dust. And 
our private affairs, which absorb so much 
of our attention, let us not think meanly 
of them ; for their right management a 
wisdom — I do not say a prudence merely 



HUMAN FAME 65 

— is often requisite, of no slight quality. 
Nay, the wisest maxims that have been 
uttered have concerned not so much the 
ordering of states as the conduct of indi- 
vidual life. Most of the proverbs of Solo- 
mon, for instance, relate to personal rather 
than national affairs. The most, then, that 
can be expected is that a few names, com- 
paratively, shall be treasured up by a world 
busy with its own engrossing interests. As 
one is glad to take a single memento from 
some celebrated spot, — a flower, for in- 
stance, from a great man's garden, — and 
as he regards less the quality than the 
fact of that, so it comes about that man- 
kind pluck, as it were, but a leaf or flower 
here and there for Fame's album, — only it 
might be wished that the choice were some- 
times made with greater judgment. 

But after all, what though men's names 
be forgotten a few years afterward, and the 
stranger who reads them above their graves 
recognizes no familiar sound ? Forgetful- 
ness cannot harm us, cannot wound us 
then. If the thought of it pains us now, the 
fact will never give us one pang. 



66 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

True, the fact is a blot upon all human 
grandeur. Is this, then, the end of it ? 
The great judge who interprets and prac- 
tically settles his country's law ; the grand 
divine who moulds the thinking of a gen- 
eration ; the gifted physician who shapes 
the methods of an age, — must they take 
their chance of remembrance for but a few 
years after they are gone ? Is this all that 
the most ambitious has to hope for, a 
doubtful, probably transient, and certainly 
unprofitable fame ? For us who are happily 
free from ambition and content to be for- 
gotten, is this all ? 

Let us take a saying we have already 
quoted from him who was " wiser than all 
men, than Ethan, and Heman, and Chalcol, 
and Darda," and give it a meaning still 
higher, perhaps, than he attached to it, — 
" If thou art wise, thou art wise for thyself." 
Let us read it in the light of Heaven. Then 
we can overleap all future time and antici- 
pate a blessed remembrance in the Great 
Day. And in that glorious hour when we 
receive the approval of our gracious Lord, 
we may understand the true significance 
of that recoil from " dumb Forgetfulness " 



HUMAN FAME 67 

which is common to human hearts. We 
would not be altogether forgotten ; we 
not only ask the kindly recollection of 
those who have known us, but though 
we make no claim for more than this, we 
shrink from the thought that a few years 
from now the world will be as if we had 
never lived in it. But if at the last, I say, 
we are to be evidently remembered and 
with affection, too, by One whose remem- 
brance will be of unspeakable preciousness 
to us, this desire of ours to which I refer 
may find its full satisfaction. In Cole's once 
famous series of paintings entitled *' The 
Voyage of Life," the youth sees a castle 
in the air, and the old man a substantial 
temple in the heavens. We can imagine 
the former to have been not entirely the 
product of the youth's fancy, but a reflection 
in part of the latter, — a reflection upon 
the clouds of this world from the glory of 
the other. For through the desire of nat- 
ural good, and good in itself innocent, our 
Father above would lead our thoughts and 
aspirations up to the spiritual and everlast- 
ing. And so in the longing for remem- 
brance we have a preparation for that day 



68 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

when the " book of remembrance " shall be 
opened. And if we accept this token of 
our immortality and use it rightly, we can 
defy time and change and man's forgetful- 
ness. " I appeal unto Caesar," we may say ; 
" from Time, I appeal to the Eternal One ; 
from Change, I appeal to the Immutable 
One ; from Man's forgetf ulness, I appeal to 
Him who never forgets." 

Ah, then Ethan and Heman and Chalcol 
and Darda, if they served the Lord with 
their wisdom, shall be indeed remembered, 
and shall no longer point a moral to un- 
heeding men. And then, blessed be God ! 
every faithful soul, however slightly en- 
dowed with what the world prizes as the 
most valuable of gifts, being truly wise, 
shall be remembered of its Lord. 



V 

LOYALTY TO TRUTH 

Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king, then ? 
Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king ! [That is, thy 
words describe me.] To this end was I born, and for this cause 
came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the 
truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice. — 
John xviii. 37, 

Was ever utterance more majestic, more 
royal ? ' Yes, I am a king, for I bear the 
sceptre of truth.' I only allude to the cir- 
cumstances, — Jesus before the represent- 
ative of human authority and power, the 
representative of an empire which em- 
braced almost the entire world. 

There is a very familiar passage of 
Scripture which is more tender than this, 
" God so loved the world that He gave His 
only begotten Son " to it and for it. And 
it is vastly majestic, too. But this is as 
majestic as that, and, rightly weighed, is 
there not tenderness in it also.? It is in 
very great part by Christ's witness to truth 
that the world's redemption is to be won. 



70 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

There is yet another passage which is to 
be ranked, methinks, with these. I do not 
say that it is either more loving or more 
impressive than still others when regarded 
from certain personal points of view, such, 
for instance, as " Now are we the sons of 
God, and it doth not yet appear what we 
shall be, but we know that when He shall 
appear, we shall be like Him." But as with 
the two first named, the passage to which 
I refer stands as a column full of majesty 
and grace. It is found in St. Peter's first 
Epistle, " Let them that suffer according 
to the will of God commit the keeping of 
their souls to Him in well-doing as unto a 
faithful Creator." Let your mind rest upon 
those words, and they are indeed meaning- 
full. We need not press them heavily or 
press them at all ; let them stand just as they 
are, not a faithful Friend, a faithful Saviour 
or Redeemer, but a faithful Creator. They 
can mean nothing less than that our Maker 
in bringing us into the world put Himself 
under obligation, to ^Himself, at least, in our 
behalf, — an obligation which of course He 
will fully meet. We, on our part, are to 
" do well " and to trust Him, " commit our- 



LOYALTY TO TRUTH 71 

selves to Him," and at length — and that 
will be before lono^, hereafter if not here — 
things shall go well with us. I confess that 
these words fill me with joy, none the less, 
certainly, that the Lord's mouthpiece here 
is not Paul or John, but the lowly Peter, 
matured by long years of patient experi- 
ence. Consider the poor child of the slums, 
to whom our thoughts turn so often, fore- 
doomed too likely, as we are wont to think 
and say, to crime itself and utter loss, and 
conceive of him as perhaps struggling, 
however faintly, towards the light which 
his Maker accords him. Does not hope 
kindle in our hearts ? That sad soul has 
a faithful Creator. 

But our subject now is Truth, and we 
must not keep from it long, even though it 
should yet appear that the line of thought 
which we have just taken has a close con- 
nection with truth, which, you know, is 
conformity to the reality of things. We 
have noted our Lord's words, not only to 
Pilate, but in some real sense to the world, 
and the world throughout the ages. The 
claims of truth as such are most plainly 



72 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

and most emphatically brought out in 
them. And be it observed, also, that the 
noun Truth occurs as often in Scripture 
as the noun Love. There is no verb for 
the one as there is for the other, so that 
no comparison can be made on that point ; 
yet we have the expression forcing itself 
forward, — " truthing it in love," that is, 
speaking truth, or dealing truly, in love: 
so closely, by the way, are genuine Love 
and genuine Truth related. It is most 
worthy of our earnest thought, besides, 
■ that our Lord calls the Holy Spirit "the 
Spirit of Truth." Let that fact rest in our 
minds; let us not fail to get its full impli- 
cation and significance. 

Recall again, my friends, Jesus' words to 
Pilate : " I am a king. To this end was I 
born, and for this cause came I into the 
world, that I should bear witness unto the 
Truth." Most full of meaning, this, to His 
disciples, and of obligation, too. But I 
confess to a fear that the sanctity of the 
Truth is not duly understood and felt by a 
great many good people. Nay, my fear 
amounts to as much as this, that it is one of 
the chief defects prevailing, and one of the 



LOYAI^TY TO TRUTH 73 

chief hindrances to the progress of Christ's 
kingdom. Assuredly there is to be no sym- 
pathy with a so-called " love of Truth for its 
own sake " which dwells easily with a bad 
temper, censoriousness, vanity, and other 
evil things ; and that, I suppose, is what 
some of those worthy men are thinking of. 
A " love of truth," too, that despises other 
branches of knowledge than its own favor- 
ites, and even pours contempt on some of 
them, — can it be genuine .^^ Frederick the 
Great's reputed love for music is said to 
have been only love for the flute, and love 
for the flute merely love of his own flute ; 
what was it worth ? And a " love of truth " 
that has slight regard for our fellows, out- 
side, at least, of our own narrow circle, is 
suspicious. 

Truth — truth of good value certainly 
— does not consist in mere propositions, 
propositions that have no vital relation to 
control, fundamental principles or facts. 
We are to avoid excessive candor, too ; we 
are stewards of Truth if we have it, and 
" it is required in stewards that a man be 
found faithful," not generous. 

Yet, after all is said. Truth is to be ex- 



74 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

alted, and Truth as such. " To this end 
was I born, that I should bear witness 
unto the Truth," said our Master. All by- 
ends are to be sacrificed in its pursuit. 
The good which this or that will effect, — 
this or that conclusion of thought, for ex- 
ample — we have not to do with that yet. 
The inquiry is, What is true? not, What 
is useful ? Some things, indeed, in this re- 
gard may well lead us to review the evi- 
dence. Have we considered the entire 
case ? Are all the facts before us ? Have 
we taken nothing for granted hastily, and 
are our premises complete? Not least of 
all, by any means, is our spirit right ? are 
we in sympathy with our fellow-men, and 
would we help them if we may ? One in- 
deed must never fail to be humane, loving, 
tender. But the fact remains that what the 
appropriate evidence shows to be true we 
must receive. In saying this I do not deny, 
rather would I earnestly affirm — a really 
scientific man's dictum, that " the evidence 
for the highest truth is to be found in the 
light which it brings far more than in 
any light which it receives." It is " a mas- 
ter light of all our seeing ; " or, in prosaic 



LOYALTY TO TRUTH 75 

phrase, it enlarges our premises. Our 
Lord's resurrection may be an example. 
Yet does not the fact remain as I have 
affirmed it ? 

Never, indeed, should a man be more 
humble than when broaching new senti- 
ments directly at war with the convictions 
of others who, he cannot doubt, are as wise 
as himself, and whom he may well believe 
to be better. Should ever pride or vanity 
or heedlessness or ill-temper be more com- 
pletely absent from his heart? But while 
we cannot be too humble, we are to think 
freely, and to speak, also, " as God gives to 
us to see the Truth." 

The course of our thought leads directly 
to consideration of the price one must pay 
for this, for it has its price. That is one of 
the verses of the Old Testament which sur- 
prise us even after all the many good 
things we have found in it, " Buy the truth, 
and sell it not." How fully did the old 
sage understand the case ! I will not ask 
you to consider the earnestness which is 
necessary, for " men miss Truth " (it has 
been rightly said) " more often from their 



76 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

indifference about it than from intellectual 
incapacity ; " nor will I dwell on either the 
modesty or the candor which we should 
have and often must have if we would learn 
the Truth ; nor will I urge you to think of 
that freedom from prejudice which is of so 
utter importance. Is anything plainer than 
that Nathaniel's question, guileless as he 
was, should not be ours, — " Can any good 
thing come out of Nazareth ? " Obviously, 
self-seeking and selfishness in any of its 
disguises must be absent from us. A cer- 
tain measure of courage is very often a part 
of the price, and sometimes a large one. 
And patience, patience how often } 

Other things will occur to you. But I 
must linger a moment or two on one thing 
which is necessary to keep the Truth at 
least, and to keep it is often as hard as to 
win it in the first place, and of course is 
quite as important. I mean the avoidance 
of false championship. It sometimes seems 
as if that hindered the progress of Truth 
in the world outside us quite as much as 
anything else, and it may well hinder its 
progress in our own minds. The pushing 
forward of one's individuality unduly, con- 



LOYALTY TO TRUTH 77 

duct which suggests that one regards the 
Truth as belonging to himself especially, 
quite plainly makes a fatal alloy in the 
price we offer. So, too, alas! do hasty 
and ill-considered attempts to defend the 
Truth. 

It has been said (for substance) by a 
great historian, and said, no doubt, as the 
result of vast reading of the world's affairs, 
" Truth is stronger than error, but error is 
often stronger than truth and power com- 
bined." Ah, how frequently has power of 
some kind been used to support what men 
have doubtless held to be true, and what 
setbacks has the really true received thus ! 
Most sorrowful delays have resulted until 
the reality could be seen in its own genu- 
ine and glorious verity. Men's unbelief — 
most plainly Faith and Truth and Duty 
and Love have but one root — men's un- 
belief, I say, has long hindered that which 
was true and which they in their fashion 
believed true. Often good and wise men, 
who would gladly have joined them, have 
felt compelled to refrain ; they saw failure 
in the face of all such efforts too plainly, 
and, more, they saw that what was asserted, 



78 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

was at best but a part, and perhaps the least 
important part, of the grand whole. Oh, 
Truth ! one cannot but exclaim at times, 
as Madame Roland said of Liberty, " what 
crimes are committed in thy name ! " 

Reliance on majorities to secure victory 
for it is most unworthy. Even if there has 
been no compromising on points of large 
importance in order to procure a majority, 
a triumph so gained is extremely unsatis- 
factory. And it is commonly futile, too. A 
few short years, and the opposite view pre- 
vails. Antiquity tells the story of an Egyp- 
tian king who required the architect of a 
magnificent temple to cut his (the king's) 
name on its granite front and give him the 
artistic honor of the structure. The man 
obeyed, but so did his work that it was not 
long after both had passed from the world 
before the monarch's name had disappeared 
and his subject's was seen in the imperish- 
able stone. The story rehearses what every 
one who has reached middle life has seen 
realized, — the wrongly won triumph has 
come to naught. 

For the intellectual man especially, there 
is one part of the price of moral truth 



LOYALTY TO TRUTH 79 

on which I must not Hnger, indeed, but 
which I must not leave unnamed. He must 
be careful to include all the premises of 
the case. This seems obvious, yet is often 
overlooked. But besides this, when the two 
things are not the same, he must most dili- 
gently remember that the same faculties of 
his being with which he lays hold of purely 
intellectual truth are not commonly enough 
for the mastery of moral verities. I speak 
not now alone of the high themes which are 
distinctively religious, but of the " humbler " 
ones, so called, of ordinary virtue. It was 
the criticism of a large-minded and char- 
itable observer upon a very eminent states- 
man that in the course of years he had 
become somewhat demoralized, and had 
lost his spiritual insight. His logical powers 
had remained as vigorous as ever, his intel- 
lectual grasp was as strong, but he was no 
longer well fitted to treat certain questions. 
Certainly the gifted must use the right 
tools in their work, or they may easily 
make blunders which their simpler neigh- 
bors escape. 

" I am a king. To this end was I born, 



8o CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

and for this cause came I into the world, 
that I should bear witness unto the Truth." 
And the Truth, my friends, is not only to 
be gained, but, as I have already hinted, it 
is to be kept. This is to be done especially 
by cherishing the truth-loving spirit. Even 
if Truth consisted in mere propositions, 
this would be the case ; for without such 
a spirit those propositions will lose their 
due hold upon us, and we may lose a sense 
of their right relation to each other. Fit 
emphasis is lost, and on fit emphasis de- 
pends truthfulness of view as much as 
on anything else. A man may think him- 
self standing on his old ground when he 
has more or less deserted it. He may be 
facing in the opposite direction. His high 
purpose, his whole-hearted devotion to the 
genuine interests of his fellows, his single- 
eyed devotion to his Lord, may have gone 
in measure, and with it has gone his right 
apprehension of the Truth. 

Even to gain the Truth is not a thing 
done once for all, and certainly to keep it 
is not. There must be constant progress. 
There must be, not morbid, yet earnest 
searchings of heart. One's motives must 



LOYALTY TO TRUTH 8i 

be scanned closely, and while he grows in 
charity for his fellows, he should grow also 
in a manly sternness with himself. 

So, then, as time goes on we shall know 
the Truth more and more perfectly, the 
real, essential Truth. As the apostle said, 
we have " a faithful Creator," and " we have 
committed ourselves to Him in well-doing." 
" A faithful Creator " — our love of Truth 
is from Him. When He breathed into us 
the breath of life. He inspired us with that 
in its germ ; and again He has breathed on 
us, and said, " Receive the Holy Ghost," 
"the Spirit of Truth." His word cannot 
fail. " Great is thy faithfulness ! " It was for 
the Truth that Peter and his brethren suf- 
fered ; they trusted, and it prevailed. 

The Truth may look dangerous ; yes, as 
good men sometimes think, fraught with 
danger. We cannot help it. Jesus says, 
" Have faith in God." We need not be 
anxious about the issue. One of our poets 
has sung, in words perhaps better known 
once than now, — 

" Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again ; 
Th' eternal years of God are hers." 

And the boundless glory of His kingdom 



82 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

are hers, or, if we prefer so to phrase it, 
His kingdom holds Truth among its grand- 
est and most precious possessions. Com- 
mitting our souls to it and to Him, we His 
subjects are at peace. " Thy counsels of 
old are faithfulness and truth." " The sum 
of Thy word is Truth." 

The next long stride to be taken in the 
progress of the Lord's cause in the world 
may well be a greater devotion to the 
Truth as such. Assuredly it is impera- 
tively demanded. The hold of unreaHty 
upon men is in some forms plainly di- 
minishing; there are now many of whom 
we might little think it who seem to have 
given themselves to Truth, while not yet 
ready to receive the full-orbed gospel. " In 
some forms," I say; " the lust of the eyes" 
is increasing, I know, and all the glamour 
of this fair world is growing stronger with 
most, methinks. But for one reason and 
another, the hold of unreality is in certain 
ways lessening, plainly and rapidly. The 
Church of Christ cannot afford, were there 
no better reason, to be identified at all with 
the unreal in thought or in conduct. On 



LOYALTY TO TRUTH 83 

the contrary, she must unmistakably and 
conspicuously stand for the real. One of 
her supreme functions must be universally 
known to be the love, the maintenance, 
and the championship of Truth. " To this 
end was I born, and for this cause came I 
into the world, that I should bear witness 
unto the Truth," said our Lord Jesus, and 
" as He is, so are we in this world." Loyalty 
to Truth for its own sake is now a main 
hinge of standing or falling Christianity. 
But Christianity will stand. 

For ourselves individually can we desire 
any better memory of us when we are gone 
from earth than that it should be said, He 
loved the Truth. His imperfections were 
not few ; at times he himself confessed it. 
But he loved the Truth, longed to know 
it, and, on fit occasion, to declare it. His 
manifest aspiration was that it should take 
more and more entire possession of his 
nature, that it should be for him, not merely 
an object to be profoundly admired, but a 
central and controlling principle of his life. 



VI 

CHRIST AND MODERN THOUGHT 

Pilate saith unto them, What shall I do then with Jesus 
which is called Christ ? — Matt, xxvii. 22. 

Pilate put that question to the Jews. But 
it is also put by the Divine Providence to 
men of all times. In this present age, es- 
pecially, the question is pressing upon the 
world, What shall we do with Jesus Christ ? 
The thinking men of our day are urged 
by it. It is very striking with what cer- 
tainty the minds of skeptics even, and of 
rationalists, so called, are directed towards 
Him. It is a curious fact that just as athe- 
ism and naturalism were seeking, not many 
years ago, to sap and mine Christianity 
with a profounder skill than that of the 
vulgar deism of a century earlier, they were 
compelled to pay a homage to its Founder 
which that deism did not pay. In front of 
their approaches His person rose like some 
impregnable tower, rendering all their toil- 
some labor vain. 



CHRIST AND MODERN THOUGHT 85 

For this is eminently a history-writing 
age. History divides with natural science 
the attention of very many of the foremost 
thinkers of our time, and connected with 
its study as not before is the analysis of 
individual character. Consequently, the 
character of Jesus of Nazareth receives an 
attention and provokes a scrutiny, and 
therefore an admiration and homage, which 
it has never had before. All other bene- 
factors of the race form so many scales 
of measurement by which to perceive His 
majestic greatness. High as they rise. He 
is seen and felt to rise immeasurably 
above them. 

There He stands in history ; nay, through 
His influence, in the present, too. There He 
stands a fact, a fact as real as the everlast- 
ing mountains or the broad continents or 
the all-surrounding oceans. " What shall I 
do then," asks the skeptical thinker, "with 
Jesus which is called Christ ? " The bril- 
liant Frenchman, Renan, complains that 
a learned German, Strauss, has neglected 
this ineffable Fact, and in due time himself 
writes the story of Jesus, but suffers the 
scoffs, even, of others of the same ration- 



86 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

alistic school. Another writes a reverent 
book ; and another still, invited to prepare 
an edition of it for this country, with equal 
reverence writes notes to accompany it, 
contradicting it at almost every point. The 
difficulty with them, as with so many of this 
class, is that they are trying to account for 
the fact instead of receiving it; that is, in 
reality they are trying to diminish or de- 
stroy the fact itself. But in vain. Jesus 
Christ is. 

It will be useful for us to pursue this 
train of thought farther. Let us observe, 
then, that there is a great effort making to 
disprove the reality of miracles. Miracles, 
it has been said, are violations of natural 
law, and natural law can never be violated ; 
all things move for evermore in an un- 
changeable order. Happily this view has 
been essentially modified in later years, 
and " the question of miracles seems now 
to be admitted on all hands to be simply a 
question of evidence." Professor Huxley 
takes this position, and affirms that their 
possibility cannot be denied. But even yet 
many are arguing that the miracles of 



CHRIST AND MODERN THOUGHT 87 

Christ are fables produced by the love or 
homage of His disciples, or that they are 
merely wonders wrought by some extraor- 
dinary but not divine power which He pos- 
sessed. But now, without discussing this 
point, Jesus Himself — what shall be done 
with Him ? He is the miracle of miracles. 
He of whom Theodore Parker said, " He 
unites in Himself the sublimest principles 
and divinest practices, thus more than real- 
izing the dream of prophets and sages; 
rises free from all prejudice of His age, 
nation, or sect ; sets aside the law, sacred 
and true, honored as it was, its forms, its 
sacrifices, its temple, its priests ; puts away 
the doctors of the law, and pours out a 
doctrine beautiful as the light, sublime as 
heaven, and true as God ; " — how shall He 
be explained ? He of whom the same man 
said: "Try Him as we try other teachers. 
They deliver their word, find a few wait- 
ing for the consolation who accept the new 
tidings, follow the new method, and soon 
go beyond their teacher, though less mighty 
minds than he. Though humble men, we 
see what Socrates and Luther never saw. 
But eighteen centuries have passed since 



88 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

the Sun of Humanity rose so high in Jesus ; 
what man, what sect, has mastered His 
thought, comprehended His method, and 
so fully applied it to life ? " 

Or again : " Measure," says Parker, " mea- 
sure the religious doctrine of Jesus by that 
of the time and place He lived in, or that 
of any time and place ; yes, by the doc- 
trine of eternal truth. Consider what a work 
His words and deeds have wrought in the 
world. Remember that the greatest minds 
have seen no farther, and added nothing 
to the doctrine of religion ; that the richest 
hearts have felt no deeper, and added no- 
thing to the sentiment of religion." Behold, 
my friends, in such an One as this a mira- 
cle indeed ! By the side of it, all the mar- 
vels imputed to Jesus become natural. 
None of them need disturb any man who 
believes in such a miracle as Jesus Christ. 

Listen for a moment to another of the 
same general school : " I would sooner 
question the existence of any other man, or 
of all other men, than His. We, what are 
we ? We live on the surface, bubbles hur- 
ried swiftly away on the rushing tide of 
time. But He! He lived. He turned the 



CHRIST AND MODERN THOUGHT 89 

whole mighty current of humanity. He 
planted Himself deep in the inmost soul of 
things, and this great Christendom is throb- 
bing with His breath to this hour." Be- 
lieve that — and who can refuse to believe 
it? — and nothing else that is recorded of 
Him is incredible. We must receive the 
facts, although we may be unable to ex- 
plain them. 

Again, call every other benefactor of our 
race a development of it ; say that every 
other was made what he was by the age in 
which he lived ; that his distinction as a 
great teacher, for instance, was that he con- 
centrated in himself its spirit in an extraor- 
dinary degree, — this cannot be said of 
Jesus. He brought new elements, radically 
new elements, into human history. He 
thought new thoughts. He felt new senti- 
ments. He not only took old or familiar 
truths and put them into such fresh rela- 
tions as to make them virtually new, — 
compare His utterance, " Thou shalt love 
thy neighbor as thyself " in its connection 
(Matt. xxii. 36-39), — but He also an- 
nounced new truths which could not be 
developed out of that age or out of all pre- 



90 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

ceding ages. He came, indeed, a Jew. He 
lived by the waters and among the hills 
and in the cities of Palestine, He spoke its 
tongue. But this only makes His original- 
ity the more striking. In that land of em- 
phatically ardent nationality He is emphat- 
ically the asserter of a universal humanity, 
— the Son of man and not the Son of 
Mary. The stained window does not give 
birth to, does not " develop," the light which 
it colors; the source of that light is the 
sun. The ideas and sentiments of Jesus 
did not spring from His age or nation, nor 
was He the offspring of preceding ages. 
Rather was He the father of all future times, 
for He was more than the Son of man; 
*' speaking as man never spake," He spoke 
and He lived and He died as the Son of 
God. 

The doctrine of Evolution, then, only 
enhances His glory. And " modern 
thought," as it is styled, if it has seemed 
to come like Balaam to curse, is staying 
like him to bless. 

"What shall I do with Jesus which is 
called Christ ? " This, I repeat, is the ques- 



CHRIST AND MODERN THOUGHT 91 

tion for the doubter. Theologies may go 
down or be greatly modified. In so far as 
they are composed of human elements, it is 
likely that they will so change or perish ; 
that is, in so far as philosophy constitutes 
a part of them, or as they are attempts to 
reconcile the truths of revelation with the 
present conclusions of philosophy, in so 
far as they are merely probable inferences 
from the statements of Scripture, in so 
far as they are the most likely hypotheses 
or even the only hypotheses that we can 
frame to explain divine truth, it is all but 
certain that future investigation will alter 
them to a considerable degree, or when it 
does not alter them create such doubts 
about portions of them as to make these 
portions practically powerless. This may 
be, although it is at least as sure that any 
such changes will come about through the 
operation of faith more than of doubt, — 
doubt which plays the policeman's part and 
arrests vagrants rather than the construc- 
tive statesman's part. I mean that in the 
progressive unfolding of scriptural truth 
or of its interpretation in the light of a 
better Christian experience and a wider 



92 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

church history and otherwise, theology will 
receive such enlargements of what it al- 
ready has as to lead to its reconstruction 
from time to time — theology, I say, man's 
work, not religion — God's work for and in 
man. But whatever may happen to the- 
ologies, Jesus Christ will stay, " the same 
yesterday and to-day and forever," and 
" What shall I do with Him ? " will be the 
question which unbelief must ask as surely 
as it was asked by Pilate. It may doubt, 
as he seems to have done, the very exist- 
ence of truth, or at least the possibility of 
its discovery, but the fact of Christ Himself 
will remain and will have to be reckoned 
with. 

The fact of Christ Himself, I say. It is 
at the least a twofold fact. There is first 
the character of Jesus in the broader range 
of the word, as including that spirit and 
method of His teaching which was the 
natural and necessary outcome of such a 
person as He was. In vain do men try to 
get rid of it. In vain do they attribute it 
to the pens of skillful gospel writers. Even 
a Parker cries out : " Shall we be told that 



CHRIST AND MODERN THOUGHT 93 

such a man never lived ? Suppose that 
Plato and Newton never lived. But who 
did their wonders and thought their 
thoughts? It takes a Newton to forge a 
Newton. What man could have fabricated 
a Jesus ? None but Jesus." That charac- 
ter stands, as the stars stand, unmoved by 
all the clouds that flit between them and 
us. 

And then there is His influence. By that 
I do not mean merely the homage He re- 
ceives, even from those who do not accept 
Him as their Lord and Saviour, wonderful 
as that is. I mean more especially that 
power by which He at once quickens and 
quiets the consciences of His followers, 
impresses them with a sense of their utter 
sinfulness before God, and yet makes them 
to count themselves God's dear children. 
I mean the influence which is unspeakably 
more profound than what expresses itself 
in such eulogies as I have cited from skep- 
tics ; an influence which is exerted over 
others by one who has gained their deepest 
gratitude, reverence, and homage, and more, 
who is the very centre of their life, as it 
were, the ground of all their best hopes and 



94 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

the source of all their highest joys ; that 
influence which is revealed in those familiar 
words : — 

" Jesus, Thou joy of loving hearts ! 

Thou fount of hfe ! Thou light of men ! 
From the best bliss that earth imparts 
We turn unfilled to Thee again." 

That influence is a great Fact, — an influ- 
ence not over one people or one race, one 
generation or one country, solely, not over 
men of one temperament or one degree 
of education, only ; but over men — and 
women — of every class, of all natures, of 
all nations and all times. There it stands 
among the great realities which nothing 
can alter or can dim. 

The character and the influence of Jesus 
Christ — this is the double fact of which I 
speak. And what to do with it ? Socrates 
— we know what to do with him. We can 
measure and define him and his place in 
history and individual culture ; and so with 
Plato, and so with Aristotle, and so with 
Bacon and with Kant of our later era. But 
Jesus — what shall we do with Him ? 

And this wonderful Fact, Jesus Christ, 
is to rise higher and higher in the world's 



CHRIST AND MODERN THOUGHT 95 

estimation, as plain evidence shows. I have 
ah-eady adverted to that remarkable course 
of affairs by which His character is exalted 
in men's minds, to wit, that interest in his- 
tory and biography and analysis of indi- 
vidual character as connected with history 
which is so manifest in our day. At the 
very time when criticism was dividing, or 
proposing to divide, the garments of Jesus, 
the person of Jesus rose before men with a 
new grandeur ; so that, even if they could 
tell what to do with the four Gospels, the 
perplexity became greater than ever what 
to do wuth the Incarnate Gospel, His glo- 
rious self. So, also, with regard to the in- 
fluence of Christ. He stands at the head 
of our modern world. In this age of a civili- 
zation so different from that in which He 
appeared. He — all whose teachings were 
on spiritual themes — receives the homage 
of men more extensively and more pro- 
foundly than ever before. He was utterly 
silent on the sciences and arts and all that 
goes to make up our modern greatness. 
His themes, I say, were entirely spiritual, 
while this age is to a very great degree, — 
by no means exclusively, but most widely, — 



96 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

a secular if not a material one ; an age whose 
trophies are eminently in the field of matter 
and in the realm of forces; an age that 
sends its missionaries, even, by the steam- 
ship and prints its Bibles by the power 
press. It is from this age that Jesus re- 
ceives universal reverence. 

Now, if we observe the causes of this, we 
can forecast the future. On the one hand, 
the providence and the Spirit of God, work- 
ing concurrently, are producing a develop- 
ment of man's higher nature side by side 
with that material development of which I 
have just spoken. It is only a half truth that 
this is a material age. If its trophies are 
eminently on the field of physical forces, 
they are also on the field of personal liberty 
eminently, and of national law, and, of late 
more especially, human brotherhood. Great 
victories are won in our time for individual 
rights and for the general w^elfare. It is a 
common remark that never in the world's 
history have so many wrong and cruel laws 
been repealed, so many just laws been en- 
acted, so many national prejudices been 
weakened, so many relics of barbarism or 
semi-barbarism been destroyed as in the 



CHRIST AND MODERN THOUGHT 97 

last fifty to seventy-five years, when mate- 
rial progress has been so wonderful. 

But there is another cause for the in- 
crease of Christ's power in our age, and it 
is this : Ours is a time of pensive thought- 
fulness as well as hope. Our modern civil- 
ization, with all its achievements, is found 
wanting ; so far from satisfying our deeper 
needs, it only makes them more manifest. 
We can travel with the speed of the wind 
at its most rapid gait, but what then if we 
carry our aching hearts with us ? We reach 
the Pacific sea, but we do not find it a 
Lethe. We can speak and hear with the 
aid and with the rapidity of lightning, but 
what if the telegram brings us the tidings 
of a friend's mortal illness or death ? We 
can surround ourselves with comforts and 
luxuries which kings in our fathers' time 
never knew, but if the soul be empty, what 
doth it profit ? What is all change, all " im- 
provement" worth if it only brings out 
more vividly the fact that we have wants 
which no finite things can satisfy .f* Our 
" cisterns " are larger, but they are only 
cisterns still ; and their cracks are larger 
and graver than ever. We plant our acorns 



98 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

in larger flower-pots, but still it remains true 
that oaks can thrive only in the ground. 

Now, this fact as realized in our experi- 
ence is turning the thoughts of many to 
Jesus Christ, who is and has what the 
world cannot give. And we want it never 
so much as when all around us is luxurious, 
when all around, too, tells of movement and 
progress and power, and it is the heart only 
that is weak and faint. Ah, then, indeed, 
we need the sympathy and support of an- 
other and an infinite heart, both human and 
divine. 

As, therefore, the world moves on to a 
constantly higher pitch of civilization, Jesus 
Christ will more and more be longed for, 
until He becomes indeed " the Desire of all 
nations." Weary of the glitter of the world, 
men will turn for solace to the Crucified 
One, and His own prediction will be ful- 
filled, " I, if I be lifted up, will draw all 
men unto me." For will they not say, the 
only relief from the pangs of this world's 
joys is to be found in a cross .^^ for, 

" Oh . . . the defeat and loss 
Of seeing all my selfish dreams fulfilled, 
Of having lived the very life I willed, 
Of being all that I desired to be ! " 



CHRIST AND MODERN THOUGHT 99 

"What shall I do with Jesus which is 
called Christ ? " will, then, be the question 
in the future, as it is now and as it has been 
in the past. And as our line of remark 
shows, it will be a question not for the un- 
lettered only. Thoughtful men will have to 
meet it and to answer it. No skepticism 
can brush it aside, for it cannot brush 
Him aside. And the observations just made 
suggest also that no skepticism can evade 
it — get around it. That providence which 
is shaped in the interests of His kingdom, 
that Spirit who works for His glory, will 
always insure that some new unfolding of 
thought, of individual experience, or of his- 
tory shall occur to counterbalance the de- 
velopment of mere rationalism. Approach 
the matter from whatever side men may, 
that majestic, transcendent, infinite Fact of 
Jesus Christ will always confront them. 

And this Fact, I note finally, appeals to 
the conscience and the heart not less than 
to the intellect. It is a question of life what 
we do with Him. On the answer a man 
makes to it depends — himself — his des- 
tiny. Alas, Pilate, when thou shalt ask, 
not, " What shall I do with Jesus ? " but, 
What will He do with me ! 



LofC. 



VII 

THE TRANSIENT AND THE ETERNAL 

And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof : but he 
that doeth the will of God abideth forever. — I. John ii. 17. 

Either of these clauses derives new force 
from the thought of its author. He, the 
Apostle John, was an old man, and one 
who had been a disciple of the Lord early. 
Among those who first became such, and 
among the chosen twelve, he would seem 
to have been enrolled at about the age of 
twenty. Strangely mature for his years, 
full of thought and deep emotion, we may 
easily conceive him to have been, and at 
the same time endowed with a modesty 
which made him singularly attractive. He 
loved to listen to the Master ; where others 
heard only Jesus' words, he heard the heart- 
beat behind them ; tone, look, attitude, all 
spoke to him, and he rejoiced to lean upon 
the Master's bosom. So he grew in grace 
and knowledge ; as Peter phrased it, " the 



THE TRANSIENT AND THE ETERNAL loi 

grace and knowledge of our Lord and 
Saviour." Years passed on ; the great 
Teacher and Friend left His disciples. But 
youthful John, as he had been at Jesus' 
tomb with the sturdy Peter, so now after 
the Ascension is found by his side in lov- 
ing fellowship and stout-hearted devotion 
to his Lord. Together they defy the Jew- 
ish magnates, and they suffer together. 

Still the years go by ; we hear little more 
of Peter, almost nothing more of John. 
But as we turn to the end of our Bibles, 
we come upon a few short letters to fellow 
Christians of the two comrades of a gen- 
eration before, and Holy Writ closes with 
a composition by St. John. His writings 
show him to have been in his old age what 
might have been expected from his youth, 
only, perhaps, that not enough is known to 
us of that youth to enable us to anticipate 
the fullness of gifts and graces which are 
revealed in his epistles. There is a depth 
of thought and a comprehensiveness of 
view, blended with a spirituality and a 
strength of purpose which are extraordi- 
nary. " What distinguished him was the 
union of the most opposite qualities," says 



I02 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

the great church historian of later days, 
" as we have often observed in grand in- 
struments for the advancement of the king- 
dom of God, — the union of a disposition in- 
clined to silent and deep meditation with an 
ardent zeal, though not impelling to great 
and diversified activity in the outward world, 
as in the case of Paul. But there was 
also a love, not soft and yielding, but a 
passion that seized with all its might and 
firmly retained the object to which it was 
directed; this was his leading characteris- 
tic." 

It is possible that when John wrote his 
first epistle he was still at Jerusalem, while 
his early associate, Peter, was nearing his 
cruel end elsewhere. In this case there 
would be great fitness in his words, " the 
world passeth away." For the Roman 
eagles were already swooping upon their 
prey in Palestine, and Jerusalem would 
soon be in ruins. But it is quite as likely, 
and it is generally thought to be more 
likely, that the time was still later; that 
Jerusalem had already fallen ; that St. John 
had fled with his fellow Christians just 
before the catastrophe, as the Master had 



THE TRANSIENT AND THE ETERNAL 103 

forewarned them to do ; and that now, at 
the age perhaps of eighty or even more, 
he had his home far away to the North, 
in Asia Minor and in the splendid city of 
Ephesus, where we know that he spent 
some of his last years. In this view, how 
impressive his words, " The world passeth 
away; " it is ever changing, it shall some 
day perish, " and the lust thereof," men's ex- 
cessive desire for its objects, those things 
so many and various and attractive, shall 
perish with it. We seem to see the old man 
looking from his house-roof (constructed in 
Oriental fashion) down upon the glowing 
thoroughfares, pomps, and shows of the 
East. Far, far away is the land of his birth, 
despoiled and devastated Palestine. Two 
generations before, he had walked the paths 
of Galilee or the streets of Jerusalem with 
his Lord, surrounded by the teeming mul- 
titudes of the capital, or near the lake ; he 
had seen that Lord die upon the cross ; he 
had heard the cry, " His blood be on us 
and on our children," and had beheld that 
blood avenged upon the Hebrew people. 
How much, even to a Christian Jew, meant 
the destruction of the temple, the fall of 



I04 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

the city, the overthrow of the entire Jewish 
commonwealth ! " The poHtical existence 
of his nation was annihilated ; it was never 
again recognized as one of the kingdoms 
or states of the world. Judsea was sen- 
tenced to be portioned out to strangers, 
the whole landed property, indeed, of the 
province was offered for sale, the capital 
was destroyed, the splendid temple demol- 
ished, and the high-priesthood buried under 
its ruins." All this the Apostle John had 
known, and much of it, probably, he had 
seen. But more even than this, the Mosaic 
economy had gone. That hope of the world 
for long centuries, that central factor in the 
world's religious history for forty genera- 
tions, that very citadel of religion to the 
Jew, had ceased to be! True, it had done 
its work, — Messias had come ; the con- 
summate flower which it was to bear had 
bloomed. But what Hebrew patriot could 
but feel as Jeremiah had felt before ? Even 
the iron-souled Paul had said, " I have great 
heaviness and continual sorrow in my 
heart for my kinsmen according to the 
flesh, whose are the fathers and of whom 
as concerning the flesh Christ came." How 



THE TRANSIENT AND THE ETERNAL 105 

could the aged John but feel that the world 

— his world, with which all his memories 
and early hopes were bound up — was end- 
ing? The long and joyous processions of 
pilgrims — his very boyhood had known 
them — which went up to the holy city 
singing, " I was glad when they said unto 
me, Let us go into the house of the Lord. 
Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O 
Jerusalem!" were things of a time already 
remote ; those happy pilgrims, even of the 
latest generation, had perished in their 
blood. 

And now, his early associates of the 
Apostolate most or all of them dead, he was 
in a strange land. It was a great and gor- 
geous city, indeed, the metropolis of the 
province, the Rome of Western Asia, which 
gave him a home. The traveler who lands 
in these days at Smyrna and hastens — as 
with a strange satire on that desolate region 

— by railway to Ephesus, finds ruins of 
immense extent; he identifies the temple 
and the theatre of Paul's history, as well as 
the market-place and gymnasia of that 
time, and tokens of their vast size and their 
splendor are abundant. On these, the 



io6 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

Apostle John, following Paul in his resi- 
dence there, looked with wondering eye ; 
here were marvels of magnificence beyond 
what he had dreamed. Chariots and horse- 
men and retinues and festive bands went 
by in dazzling succession ; a citizen of Rome 
itself would have admired the rival glory 
of this great capital of the East, for the 
lustre of his own city, repeated here, was 
enhanced by Oriental glitter. 

We can imagine St. John, I have said, 
looking down in thoughtful survey upon 
this wondrous scene. Could it ever fade ? 
But the cry of Jerusalem's agony was ever 
in his ears, and, had nothing else suggested 
it, his Bible always at his side would have 
recalled Babylon and Nineveh and many 
more cities and lands which had had their 
day. " The burden of Babylon," the pro- 
phet Isaiah had written centuries before, — 
" Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, shall be 
as when God overthrew Sodom and Go- 
morrah : Wild beasts of the desert shall lie 
there, and wolves shall cry in their castles 
and jackals in the pleasant palaces ; " and 
all men knew of the fulfillment of the pro- 
phecy. " The burden of Egypt : " " Woe 



THE TRANSIENT AND THE ETERNAL 107 

to the land shadowing with wings which is 
beyond the rivers of Ethiopia ! " and these 
tombs and temples which men visit in their 
awesome grandeur to-day were in the midst 
of deserts as barren and sere in John's time 
as they are in ours. " The burden of Tyre," 
that Tyre which John had passed in his way 
northward, quite likely, as the traveler does 
yet : " Howl, ye ships of Tarshish, for it is 
laid waste ! Who hath taken this counsel 
against Tyre, the crowning city, whose 
merchants are princes, whose traffickers 
are the honorable of the earth ? The Lord 
of hosts hath purposed it, to stain the pride 
of all glory." And this proud Ephesus, — 
why should it not go the way of prouder 
Tyre, Nineveh, Babylon ? These gay riders 
and drivers and pedestrians, haughty Ro- 
man, supple Greek, dreamy Phrygian, 
desert-born Parthian wild as those sons of 
the wilderness to-day that have come all the 
way from Bagdad to Damascus, — why 
should they survive when the mariners of 
Tyre, the princes of the farther East, the 
kingly tomb-builders of Egypt, had passed 
on in their turn ? Nay, when Rome itself, 
as he had already set down at God's bid- 



io8 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

ding, must go also ? The philosophers, the 
pleasurists, the wizards and necromancers, 
the devotees of Diana, the shrine-makers 
and the swarming craftsmen of Ephesus, 
and all its joyous, sensuous, corrupt and 
corrupting multitudes must have their short 
day. So, we know, it has proved. The 
once busy harbor has become a pestilential 
swamp ; solitude and desolation reign on 
every side ; one climbs cautiously the stony, 
broken tiers of the mighty amphitheatre 
once so crowded, to look forth upon per- 
petual silence, and, as night falls, hurries 
back rapidly as he came to the haunts and 
homes of living men. 

With no prophet's eye just then, — at 
least he needed none, — but with a memory 
that teemed with the story of human life, 
with a heart full of fatherland, with eyes 
perhaps tear-bedimmed as he recalled the 
companions of his youth, he wrote, " The 
world passeth away, and the lust thereof." 
All these things which men so seek and 
enjoy, even the empty knowledge they 
prize, the pleasure they pursue, the power 
or praise they covet, the very desire for 
them, are to go by, are going by already. 



THE TRANSIENT AND THE ETERNAL 109 

" Love not the world," he had just writ- 
ten, "neither the things that are in the 
world ; " fix not your hearts upon them. 
" If any one love the world, the love of the 
Father is not in him ; " it cannot be, for the 
world is a thing, and perverted and sin- 
stained besides, while the Father is a Per- 
son and a Person all-excellent. And " all 
that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and 
the lust of the eyes and the pride " — or 
vainglory — " of life, is not of the Father, 
but is of the world " — appertains to it, to 
its imperfection, unworthiness, and transi- 
toriness. " And the world passeth away, 
and the lust thereof ; but he that doeth the 
will of God abideth forever I " 

Was ever thought grander, my friends, 
than this last .? St. John sees kingdoms and 
empires trooping to their doom, but he, the 
solitary man that does the will of the Eter- 
nal One, shares His eternity and abideth 
forever ! His apostle does not speak now, 
as he had done in the Apocalyptic vision, 
of the innumerable multitude of those who 
shall forever celebrate the high praises of 
God, those "of all nations and peoples and 
tongues " " who shall hunger no more, nei- 



no CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

ther thirst any more, for the Lamb shall 
feed them and shall lead them unto living 
fountains of waters." But " he," the one, 
perchance, lonely soul, — and St. John's 
eye, it may be, fell on a disciple whom he 
knew, among the gay throng, an object of 
their scoffs and jeers, — " but he that doeth 
the will of God abideth forever." His city 
shall follow other mighty capitals to a com- 
mon overthrow, endless desolation shall be 
its and their fate ; yet he abideth eternally. 
Like the everlasting hills which see cities 
and kingdoms perish, but themselves re- 
main, like the rivers which wash to-day the 
foundations of great marts and ages hence 
flow among their ruins, themselves un- 
changing, he endures evermore. 

Life, you know, was a favorite conception 
of this apostle ; life, love, truth, and purity 
or holiness were keywords in all his thought, 
and in great measure they were names for 
the same thing. Not mere existence, still 
less mere existence here below, but life in 
its fullness was ever in his mind and on his 
lips. It is he who records those words of 
the Lord Jesus, " I am come that they 
might have life, and might have it abun- 



THE TRANSIENT AND THE ETERNAL iii 

dantly." For us, life here, life in the soul, is 
the commencing point or germ of a crea- 
tion that is eternal. Whosoever believes in 
the Redeemer hath life eternal — he has 
passed from death unto life — he can die 
no more. It is not the future existence of 
the unbeliever that John denies, but the 
fullness of life for Christ's disciple which 
he affirms. 

But why shall he that doeth the will of 
God abide forever ? Because " his life is 
hid with Christ in God." He partakes 
God's blessed eternity, therefore. He has 
broken with the mutable, the transient, the 
perishable, and has joined himself to the 
everlasting God. God is the everlasting 
One. " Thy years are throughout all gen- 
erations. Of old hast Thou laid the foun- 
dations of the earth, and the heavens are 
the work of Thy hands. They shall perish, 
but Thou shalt endure; yea, all of them 
shall wax old like a garment ; as a vesture 
shalt Thou change them and they shall be 
changed. But Thou art the same, and Thy 
years shall have no end." And we, if His 
children, shall endure also. As the present 
heavens and earth are His vesture which 



112 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

He alters at will, so we are clothed, as it 
were, with this world and the things that 
are in it. They change continually ; in due 
season we shall exchange them for the gar- 
ments of heaven's fellowships, occupations, 
enjoyments. We ourselves — we ourselves, 
can never die, but abide forever. We are 
one with God, and therefore (I say) we 
share His eternity. 

I know that this is " Palm Sunday," and 
that the note of triumph on Palm Sunday 
is only for a time, and that soon comes 
" Good Friday " and Calvary and the cross. 
But then " Easter " follows speedily, and 
" Christ, being raised from the dead, dieth 
no more," and " because He lives we shall 
live also." We have His word for it, and 
most sure it is. God will keep His own. 
This earthly life, 't is true, is passing for 
us, this frame of things to which we are so 
very closely related, of which, indeed, we 
are physically a part, is changing and shall 
disappear; but if obedient to the will of 
God we must endure. That will is the ex- 
pression of God's nature, — the Eternal's 
nature, — and he, whoever he is, that joins 
himself to it and receives it into himself 



THE TRANSIENT AND THE ETERNAL 113 

becomes one in spirit, and therefore essen- 
tially one, with the Everlasting. 

There are two messages that come to us 
through the Scriptures which are charged, 
methinks, with extraordinary meaning. 
One is in the words of the friend of Job, 
the patriarch Eliphaz. Among the Eastern 
deserts he said, " Acquaint now thyself with 
God and be at peace." The other is in the 
words of the Apostle John, amidst the 
splendors of the great city of Asia Minor : 
" The world passeth away, but he that do- 
eth the will of God abideth forever." And 
the ruinous wastes of Ephesus, its de- 
spoiled and desolated shrines, and its crum- 
bling towers, seem to reecho the words, 
" The world passeth away, but he that do- 
eth the will of God abideth forever ! " 



VIII 

HAPPINESS: ITS SOURCES OR CONDITIONS 

As sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making 
many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things. 
— II. Cor. vi. lo. 

The first clause is my text, — " sorrowful," 
oppressed by many griefs, as enemies deem, 
and certainly not free from them, " yet al- 
way rejoicing : " plainly the words of a 
happy man. 

At a recent meeting of the American 
Board for Foreign Missions I was im- 
pressed, as I have often been, with the utter- 
ances as to their happiness made by returned 
missionaries. The son of a former presi- 
dent of Dartmouth College — one reared, 
then, among opportunities and social enjoy- 
ments quite equal, certainly, to those had 
by the average of men — declared very em- 
phatically that his happiest days had been 
spent in his work abroad; and that work 
had been in South Africa, a part of the 
world destitute, beyond most, of the advan- 



HAPPINESS 115 

tages that distinguish Christian civilization. 
This with other similar facts has turned 
my attention to the sources or conditions 
of human happiness, and it is to this sub- 
ject that I would ask yours at this time, — 
an important theme, surely. 

The first that I name is employment 
adapted to one's various powers. We can- 
not doubt that Paul himself owed very 
much to this. 

We were not made to be mere recipi- 
ents, but our happiness itself depends on 
the exercise of our faculties. Whatever 
may be the case on an occasional holiday, 
a well man cannot commonly be satisfied 
without the active use of his powers. Edu- 
cation, development, discipline is plainly a 
chief end our Maker has in view for us, and 
hence mere pleasure soon wearies us. Even 
the little child, it has often been observed, 
gets more enjoyment out of some simple 
blocks that give opportunity for the imagi- 
nation in their use than out of the more 
expensive toys which give none. And with 
us who are older, the exercise of our vari- 
ous faculties is necessary. To have the 
intellect in several of its parts employed, 



ii6 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

the sensibilities in some of their appHca- 
tions busy, and the will active, is requisite 
to any but a quite low degree of happiness. 
To be obliged, for example, to contrive 
ways and means towards a desired end, to 
compare and judge and choose, to have to 
carry some good measure of responsibility, 
to be compelled to nerve ourselves to reso- 
lute effort or endurance, — these things and 
such as these are needful. It is not a kind- 
ness to those we love to lift every burden 
from them ; it is not a kindness to chil- 
dren, for instance, to do all their thinking 
or all their choosing for them. And we 
make a great mistake in our own case 
when we evade any fair measure of labor 
or even of sacrifice. All experience shows 
that a large demand upon us is necessary 
in all ordinary circumstances of health or 
of condition otherwise, and that we are hap- 
pier commonly with a demand too large 
rather than too small. 

Here, then, is an explanation of such 
cases as that to which I have referred. A 
man of a fair degree of cultivation goes 
among the degraded tribes of Africa. But 
consider what employment is given to his 



HAPPINESS 117 

mind, and the more spread out, you will 
note, in proportion to his breadth of cul- 
ture. The language or languages of his 
new friends will occupy him, and will in- 
terest him all the more if he is a man of 
linguistic tastes; quite likely he will be 
called upon to make a grammar, a diction- 
ary, and, most agreeable of labor to him, 
to translate his own dear home-born Bible 
into another tongue. Moral questions will 
come up that might well hold the most 
powerful intellect ; many hard questions of 
casuistry will arise, such as is suggested by 
the story of Naaman in the Old Testa- 
ment, when, after avouching Jehovah as 
his God, he asked that he might be for- 
given if, when his master went into the 
idolatrous temple to worship there, and he 
had to attend and support him and the 
king kneeled, he should kneel too ; what 
ought Elisha to have replied } — to have 
said that it was right, or wrong, for him to 
do so ? Society is to be reconstructed, not to 
say formed from the beginning ; a code of 
laws, perhaps, must be made. And all this 
apart from the preaching of the Gospel in 
public and private, and watching its effect 



ii8 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

upon its objects. What a draft upon one's 
sensibilities in many directions there must 
be ! And resokition, courage, and fortitude, 
we may be sure, will often be taxed. 

All this, in addition to those pleasures 
which we are apt to forget, but which are 
very important to our happiness, and which 
are enjoyed as much in Africa as here ; I 
mean the pleasures in one's own home, and 
the observation, besides other things, of the 
common course of nature, — its sunsets 
and springs and ripening harvests and 
thriving foliage and the rest. It is a very 
profound remark of the worldly wise Goethe 
that " all satisfaction in life is based upon 
the regular recurrence of outward things, 
such as day and night and the seasons of 
the year; the more open we are to these 
pleasures, so much the happier we are." 
And these are found as much in one place 
as in another. 

I have only outlined, you observe, the 
occupations of a missionary in Africa or 
elsewhere; and yet it is easy to perceive 
how many sources of happiness he must 
have in ordinary circumstances. I have not 
forgotten his wants, especially that of con- 



HAPPINESS 119 

genial society. I know that he must rely 
greatly on other and celestial fountains of 
it, which I am yet to mention, but these 
can be found and are found as readily 
there as elsewhere. 

I am inclined to name as a second con- 
dition of happiness, in very many cases at 
least, the having of some unsupplied wants ; 
I mean earthly wants. 

There is certainly danger when all one's 
wants are gratified. When, for instance, 
one is able to buy everything that he really 
cares to buy, when he can look to the 
future, too, without anxiety, not because of 
a cheerful temper or a hearty trust in God, 
but because of the greatness of his store, 
there is peril to his happiness. The testi- 
mony of very many thoughtful persons who 
are rich is that their best years in this re- 
spect were those when they had to toil for 
their bread, were obliged to economize, and 
their hope for the future rested on the kind 
providence of their Heavenly Father. As 
with the child to whom I have referred, 
who finds more satisfaction in simple toys 
than in costly ones, so many a man is best 



I20 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

pleased when he has to manage to make a 
little go a long way. The prayer of Agur, 
" Give me neither poverty nor riches," 
seems to have been wise for more reasons 
than one. The rich man must take care to 
give freely, so as to get a counterbalancing 
felicity from that. 

Certainly there is truth enough in the 
consideration before us to keep us from 
repining because all our wants are not met, 
truth enough to keep us from envying our 
more prosperous neighbor. That neighbor 
may not only be destitute of something that 
we have or suffer from some ill that we have 
not, but his very prosperity may make him 
less happy than we suppose. 

A contented disposition I need do little 
more than name. 

Happiness cannot dwell with discon- 
tent. Do what we will, surround ourselves 
with every barricade to keep out the en- 
emy, such a temper has the enemy within 
already, and in the very citadel. Making 
every reasonable effort to better our lot, 
avoiding all unworthy satisfaction with the 
present, we yet must learn somehow to 



HAPPINESS 121 

reconcile with this a habit of contentment, 
or we are undone. We must " look at the 
bright side " of our situation, must compare 
ourselves with our less fortunate friends, 
must accustom ourselves to note and enjoy 
little things as well as great ones, — we must 
do something to gain it if we have it not, 
or happiness will flee from us inevitably, 
be our home in America or anywhere else. 
Discontent will make a Caffraria out of 
New England, will render us worse off than 
a Zulu. We may as well learn this first as 
last. You remember, perhaps, the English 
poet-moralist's assertion that our discom- 
fort flows not from Heaven's refusal to give, 
but from our unwillingness to receive : — 

" What makes man wretched ? Happiness denied ? 
No ; 't is happiness disdained. 
She comes too meanly drest to win our smile, 
And calls herself Content, a homely name ! 
Our flame is Transport, and Content our scorn." 

It is a great deal to accept what cannot be 
altered. We may say and think in some 
situations that we ought not to be satisfied, 
but what are we going to do about it ? If 
nothing can be done we must just accept 
it. Think and contrive and act up to that 



122 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

point if we will, but when that point is 
reached, we must take the fact as cheer- 
fully as we can. I know that mere accept- 
ance of that is not contentment. And yet 
it is often more than half way to it. It is 
the first step in this, as in other things, 
that costs. 

But how often is discontent found among 
those who have much, rather than among 
those who have little, among those who 
have three quarters or nine tenths of what 
they wish rather than among those who 
have little or none ! If you doubt it, re- 
member the testimony of Goethe that at 
the end of a long life all his truly happy 
days did not amount to more than a 
month. 

Hence it is natural to name moderation 
in desires and expectations as a condition 
of happiness. We must not " want high 
noon at the day's dawn." We are prone to 
indulge extravagant ones, not indeed as to 
the total amount to be hoped for from life, 
— I doubt whether most of us expect 
enough from life, — but as to what is to be 
anticipated from any one event or acquisi- 



HAPPINESS 123 

tion, or any one group or series of events 
or acquisitions. One of the very best of 
English essayists (Sir James Stephen) has 
said : " To all who contemplate it in a de- 
vout spirit, human Hfe presents itself as a 
scene which, though beset with many trials, 
and not much abounding in intense de- 
lights or in positive pleasures, is yet replete 
with ever-recurring satisfactions." We are 
in constant danger of forgetting this. We 
anticipate and we try to provide for intense 
delights. But the wise Ruler of all has an- 
other and better economy than this. For 
the most part. He would have our happi- 
ness spread over a larger portion of life 
than profuse pleasures can be ; and He 
would have it consist in the moderate but 
continually recurring gratification of sev- 
eral parts of our nature rather than in the 
complete gratification of any one of them. 
It is only seldom that the soul is stirred to 
its depths by joy ; but day by day, and even 
in sad days, our various powers are, many 
of them, called into pleasing exercise. 

And the powers thus employed grow 
stronger by use, and the enjoyment thus 
derived grows deeper ; while intense use of 



124 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

a single capacity of happiness exhausts it ; 
home pleasures, for example, become more 
and more grateful to the heart, but those, 
even of an innocent nature, which greatly 
move it, soon pall. 

To be happy, then, we must learn to 
limit our expectations; not, I repeat, so 
much as to the total amount to be hoped, 
as to what is to be looked for from any one 
thing or series of things. We are to expect 
happiness rather in the sum of pleasant 
influences flowing in upon us than in the 
strength or intensity of a single one of 
them. It is something to have the sunlight 
falling gently upon us, and the green grass 
spread out around us in its season ; it is 
something to have the ordinary wants of 
nature simply and healthfully met; it is 
much to have our friends about us, though 
seldom engaged in any particular scheme 
to make us happy ; it is much to live in an 
atmosphere of freedom, righteous law, and 
Christian morality and faith, — stirred by 
few strong winds, perhaps, but always pure 
and fresh and tonic ; and from the sum, I 
say, of such influences as these, and I 
might name many more, are we to hope 



HAPPINESS 125 

for happiness, rather than from the all- 
absorbing power of the exquisitely delight- 
some. And not, indeed, are we to look for 
it so much as to have it. In curbing our 
expectations in the way I have suggested, 
w^e shall also curb our desires. We shall be 
content to receive the gifts of our Father 
as they come. And thus we shall bathe in 
the circumambient ocean of His goodness 
rather than seek to plunge ourselves be- 
neath its occasional torrent. I do not for- 
get the difference :n temperaments; what 
I am saying is true of any. Nor do I forget 
the often " intense delight " to be had in 
Nature. 

Employment, then, adapted to one's vari- 
ous powers, some unsupplied wants, per- 
haps, a contented disposition, and reason- 
able wishes, — these are chief sources or 
conditions of human happiness. Blessed be 
God that they are so greatly within the 
reach of every one of us ! 

But I must also name a quick and ap- 
proving conscience. You note that I say a 
quick as well as an approving conscience, 
which is often named alone in this con- 



126 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

nection. Indeed, I question whether a man 
in a thoroughly right state of character 
notices the approval of conscience much 
more than one in bodily health observes the 
workings of his heart. But if the approba- 
tion of conscience is to be spoken of in this 
relation, it should be a quick, sensitive con- 
science that approves, and not a dull one ; 
else, true happiness, happiness worth speak- 
ing of, cannot be had. One must have a 
sterling integrity of character, the metal 
must be sound all through, or such happi- 
ness cannot be. In vain, of course, will the 
dishonorable man, or the man of low aims, 
or the self-seeking man look for that ; but 
equally in vain will the man of shallow 
virtue, however sincere, expect it. Nothing 
less valuable than solid bullion will be ac- 
cepted for it, — I am speaking, you ob- 
serve, of that solid happiness which many 
miss while they think themselves happy, 
and, in some poor sense, are so. This, I 
say, nothing but the reality of virtue can 
secure, and its thorough reality. Conven- 
tional morality cannot gain it. Conform- 
ity to merely current standards of right- 
eousness will do much in some ways, — 



HAPPINESS 127 

will obtain the approval of our fellows, for 
example, which has its value; but it will 
not bring us this. " God is not mocked," 
and as our Lord has expressly taught, no 
righteousness, no alms-giving, no honesty, 
" to be seen of men " will win from His 
hand this blessing. 

You are expecting me, my friends, I 
cannot doubt, to speak of beneficence as 
a chief source of happiness to those who 
practice it. And sc it is. Surely the Apos- 
tle Paul found it s(^ when he spoke of him- 
self and his companions in his work as 
being " poor, yet making rich." 

Yet you anticipate me. You know all 
that I can say on the subject, except, per- 
haps, as some discriminations should be 
made which might require both careful and 
prolonged discussion. Without this, in- 
deed, we all may understand that real hap- 
piness can scarcely come from a generosity 
which is not, in its essential nature, like the 
Great Giver's. The sun shines because it 
is in it to shine, and He gives because it is 
in Him to give. Not to be praised for it, 
not to be self-complacent in it ourselves, is 



128 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

the spirit of a true human giver who shall 
be blessed in his deed. He would simply 
help those of his Father's children who 
need help. And he does not judge nor 
measure that need by any narrow standard; 
he knows that, as Jesus said, the life is 
more than meat and the body than rai- 
ment. And although he gives till he feels 
it, he is not seeking for gratitude in return 
for what he does. He merely shares his 
own happiness with others. That is as ne- 
cessary as salt is for its uses. 

Reserving this topic, then, for a future oc- 
casion, perhaps, I name now a single other 
source of human happiness, — trust in God 
and His Gospel. 

But although this is the crown of all, I 
shall be brief on it too, because it is the 
source of something better than what is 
commonly called " happiness." Still, in a 
world so full of anxiety and of sorrow, and 
often of both together in the same person, 
as this is, the true source of rest must not 
be unnoted when we speak of happiness. 
For how is happiness possible without rest? 
And how is rest possible without some- 



HAPPINESS 129 

thing to rest upon ? And what is there to 
rest upon but God ? Occupation, a con- 
tented disposition, and the others, are not 
enough in great trouble. They may coop- 
erate with the grace of our heavenly Father, 
but they cannot take its place. The sick 
child finds one position more comfortable 
than another on its bed, a mother bending 
over it, but none satisfactory, and so em- 
ployment or general contentment cannot 
of themselves give peace. Integrity, even 
that strong sterling virtue of which I have 
spoken, cannot do this ; it is like the brac- 
ing of the body to vStand as well as it can, 
but it is not like the resting of the body. 
Beneficence itself is but as exercise when 
one longs for and needs repose. No, rest 
must come from another ; it is the surren- 
der of our weakness to another's strength 
that brings it, — the surrender of our 
strength, even, to one infinitely stronger ; 
and hence the Divine Saviour said, " Come 
unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy 
laden, and I — I myself — will give you 
rest." 

Such, then, are the great conditions or 



I30 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

sources of happiness in life, the blessing 
of which we think so much, and which is 
indeed a blessing, for Landor's remark is 
almost true that " goodness does not more 
certainly make men happy than happiness 
makes them good." Some will find it easier 
to have one, and some to have another of 
these sources, but all, and with a single ex- 
ception I may say especially the greatest, 
are within the reach of every one. 

I end with the thought that, as St. Paul 
found out, it makes comparatively little 
difference where we are, or where we spend 
our lives, if we are where God sets us or 
calls us. With employment adapted to our 
natures, we can get on despite many de- 
fects and disadvantages in our lot; with a 
contented disposition, we can bear almost 
anything ; with reasonable desires and 
hopes, we can find very many compensa- 
tions for the want of some things that we 
should like ; while integrity at least averts 
much unhappiness, and trust in God and 
His Gospel brings that rest — alike amid 
sorrows and the consciousness of un- 
worthiness — which, as things are, is the 



HAPPINESS 131 

grand condition of the truest happiness in 
this life. Let us not, then, be dissatisfied 
with the present or troubled about the fu- 
ture. " The strange Future " (says one, in 
another connection) " holds out her arms 
and asks us to come to her." We need not 
be afraid to go. There will almost always be 
something for us to do, — and when not, 
something to bear with the help of our hea- 
venly Father ; a contented spirit cannot be 
taken from us by man or fiend, and God 
will not take it from us, and the promise 
ever stands, " My grace is sufificient for 
thee." 

Tell me, ye who have tried it, is not this 
the true as well as the Christian philosophy 
of life ! 



IX 

EASTER: LIFE 

Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more ; but ye 
see me : because I live, ye shall live also. — John xiv. 19. 

Easter signifies life, and uninterrupted 
life. A little more fully, it means life 
through Christ, and that life lasting and 
everlasting. Its idea is given yet more 
largely in our Lord's words to a disciple, 
" I am the resurrection, and the life : he 
that believeth in me, though he were dead, 
yet shall he live : and whosoever liveth and 
believeth in me shall never die." 

Easter, I say, means life. It falls, most 
fitly, in spring, and this year so late in spring 
as to show us, not indeed the full signs of 
revival in the natural world, yet decisive 
tokens that a long and deathlike slumber 
is ended. How much there is in the mere 
thought of life! These plants about the 
pulpit, how much they signify ; what pro- 
cesses they represent; by what processes 



EASTER: LIFE 133 

they exist! But to the informed mind a 
great deal more is meant by "life." The 
world — the universe — is a living thing. 
All is vital. Everywhere are the pulsations 
of an infinite energy. How much, then, I 
repeat, is there in the mere idea of " life " ! 
To other than immortal beings like our- 
selves, how much there is in simple exist- 
ence ; may I not say, how vast the pleasure 
in such existence even to ourselves, if it is 
not a positively painful one ! And to such 
an one, even, many cling. 

But we need more. For one thing, we 
need hope. And this, I take it, is the sug- 
gestion of spring which makes the season 
so delightful to us. Nature, indeed, has no 
favorites; winter, grand though hoary, is 
as much to her as any other of her chil- 
dren. But in us spring kindles hope. It 
intimates new and better possibilities. It 
indicates life, as autumn and winter do not. 
But life as thus suggested is but a parable 
of another and higher. We need something 
better than life itself, something more than 
even heavenly existence. There is a life 
which is a present possession. Note three 
points : — 



134 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

This better life consists in the kindling 
of all our powers, especially our moral 
powers. In our earthly state we are very 
much like a bird with one wing broken. 
But the spiritual life, especially as consum- 
mated hereafter, involves the activity of 
every part of our higher nature, — of con- 
science, the capacity of reverence, moral 
intuitions, affection, and the rest. And in 
heaven, we m ay believe, our executive powers 
and our endowments of every kind will 
have their full range. The thorough quick- 
ening of our moral faculties will itself do 
much in that direction, as indeed it might 
do here. True religion is a great help in- 
tellectually. 

But again, this better life of which we 
speak, this more than mere existence, con- 
sists in the harmony of all our awakened 
powers. There is such a thing as an ill- 
proportioned development of our nature. 
With some the soul is too weak for the in- 
tellect. This is glowing, that is cold. Im- 
agination may kindle sensibility, but the 
heart may be even frigid; or tears start 
quickly, while benevolent doing does not 
follow. In the moral nature itself there is 



EASTER: LIFE 135 

often a want of proportion. Emotion may 
be active while conscience is dull ; a robber 
has gone from the confessional to a crime. 
On the other hand, there may be a dispro- 
portionate insistence on conscience and 
too little of affection and also of the sense 
of the beautiful. A feeble will may con- 
sist with even a quick conscience or lively 
affections. The spiritual life, I say, more 
especially as consummated in heaven, is 
the harmony of our quickened powers of 
soul. 

And once more, this better life includes 
personal friendship and union with the 
Infinite Source of life, our Father and 
Redeemer. It is not active in its own vigor 
alone. It is one with a higher nature, and 
draws power from that. On this point our 
Lord has given us the familiar simile of the 
grapevine. " To be all that you are capable 
of being, your spirit must be linked with 
mine." 

This, then, is the first suggestion of to- 
day, — Life, — not merely physical, but 
something altogether beyond that, some- 
thing of which the bodily is an allegory, 
a life of mind and soul, — yes, of a body, 



136 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

also, though not of this mortal "flesh and 
blood." " I am come," says the Lord Christ, 
" that they might have life, and might have 
it abundantly." For this He first came, 
and for this He rose from the dead. " Life 
abundantly " ! How plainly this is what 
we want ! How certainly the great Healer 
knew our need ! 

But now, in the next place, Easter means 
uninterrupted life, — life everlasting; 

Physically we die. No degree of the 
higher life gives us immunity. " Death 
reigned from Adam to Moses," says Scrip- 
ture, and it has reigned ever since, — as a 
viceroy, indeed, and not an absolute mon- 
arch, and yet how great his powers are ! 
Over all he reigns, and, in some sense, with 
laws which we may call his own ; his Supe- 
rior interposes no " veto." In all times, as 
in all lands, he reigns, and " all seasons are 
his own," and innumerable are his sub- 
jects. The traveler in the ancient East 
finds no monuments more frequent or more 
durable than those which certify to the rule 
of Death. If they proclaim the might of 
some departed monarch, they declare his 



EASTER: LIFE 137 

name — the ever abiding monarch's — as 
well. Whether it be India, before the Taj 
Mahal, that dream in stone, or Persia 
where the lofty tomb of Cyrus the Great 
carries one's thoughts back to the majesty 
of twenty-six centuries past, or Egypt with 
its wondrous river lined with temple-graves, 
— everywhere he is assured that Death 
reigned. But not such proud monuments 
alone affirm it. Even more impressive, 
often, is some unlooked-for and solitary 
sarcophagus or stone coffin, lying empty by 
the roadside, or compelled to serve one or 
another present purpose — that of a water- 
trough, perhaps — for the ignorant and 
heedless natives of the land. So, as he 
journeys westward, to Greece, Italy, or else- 
where, and views splendid structures with 
immortal memories, or lowly slabs with 
words rudely cut, 't is ever the same, — the 
same, too, when he reaches his own shores 
and his own village, — "Death reigned!" 

But the Lord of Life, when incarnate 
on earth, taught men a few times by act 
as well as speech that Death was only a 
viceroy. " I am the resurrection and the 
life," said He by word and deed both. One 



138 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

thing more was infinitely desirable, — one 
consummate fact. It was that' He should 
die Himself and rise again, — that He 
should recognize Death's authority, yet show 
His — and our — superiority to it. And 
now we know that " the hour is coming in 
the which all that are in their graves shall 
hear his voice and shall come forth." To- 
day — Easter — means existence beyond 
the grave, and to Christ's disciples life in- 
deed. 

It is hard for us to appreciate how much 
the resurrection of Christ means, because 
to us the thought of the future life has 
become familiar, a matter of course. But 
let us remember the great world of an- 
tiquity, so long in its duration, and adorned 
with sages so many and so illustrious still, 
who yet for the most part were ignorant 
of the fact. Recall Csesar, the highest reli- 
gious functionary at the time, arguing in 
the Roman Senate against the execution 
of Catiline on the ground that death was 
the end of existence and therefore an es- 
cape from punishment, and even Cicero, 
urging execution yet taking no exception to 



EASTER: LIFE 139 

Caesar's contention. Heathen poets, in- 
deed, gave descriptions of a future beyond, 
but they were commonly plaintive, even on 
their brighter side. The existence they 
told of has been rightly called a half exist- 
ence — as if its subjects were more dead 
than alive, and was felt by the departed 
themselves to be so. Homer makes the 
spirit of his mighty hero, Achilles, declare 
to a former comrade still living who was 
permitted to visit the world of shades that 
any lot on earth, even that of a bondman, 
was to be preferred to even the highest 
there. At times pagan philosophers as- 
serted the immortality of the soul and 
spoke sublimely of it ; but on examination 
we commonly find that they meant by a 
future state something which, as one has 
said, "we should regard a denial of it; 
namely, that the soul upon death was re- 
absorbed into the Universal Soul." And 
the theory, cherished by many, of the soul 
passing at death into the body of some ani- 
mal and afterward into that of another, and 
so on indefinitely, — the doctrine of " trans- 
migration " or " metempsychosis," — how 
utterly different from the Christian ideal ! 



I40 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

The Jews themselves in ancient times 
grasped this truth very imperfectly, and 
generally did not really grasp it at all ; at 
best their views were exceedingly shad- 
owy. Some later poet might sing, " In thy 
presence is fulness of joy; at thy right 
hand are pleasures for evermore ; " or, " I 
shall be satisfied, when I awake, with 
thy likeness;" but others would lament: 
"Wilt thou show wonders to the dead? 
Shall the dead arise and praise thee? 
Shall thy wonders be known in the dark ? 
and thy righteousness in the land of for- 
getfulness ? " How comfortless was even 
the good king Hezekiah when he exclaimed, 
" The living, the living, he shall praise 
thee ; " that is, only a man alive in this 
world can do that. If we are surprised that 
the ancient people of God, knowing as 
much as they did of divine truth, should 
have known no more on this subject of 
immortality, something as surprising may 
be true now. Will it not soon seem strange 
that men — ■ and not all of them skeptics — 
should fail to note that the grand function 
of the Bible is to draw us to our Heavenly 
Father, righteousness, and eternal life, and 



EASTER: LIFE 141 

not to teach science, philosophy, history, or 
geography, and that, for that purpose su- 
premely, it relates and describes; and in 
a very large degree, as in the Psalms and 
by the Prophets, seeks by poetry to win us 
and sing us into the kingdom of God ? 
The great object of the Jewish economy, 
most certainly at least in this regard, seems 
to have been to ground men in the idea and 
fact of God, the eternal, holy, beneficent 
Jehovah, — which, indeed, is the real foun- 
dation for the truth of a blessed immortality 
itself. " Whom have I in heaven, and there 
is none upon earth that I desire, in compar- 
ison with thee : " there — in God — is the 
grand source of comfort, strength, hope, 
for the present and for the future alike. 
" My flesh and my heart faileth ; but God 
is the strength of my heart and my portion 
for ever." 

But now consider that immortality which 
Christ " has brought to light." It is as dif- 
ferent from the thought of heathen poets 
and sages as reality is from shadow, and as 
distinct from the idea of Hebrew psalmists 
and prophets as sunshine is from moon- 
light. The gospel tells us of a personal, 



142 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

endless life hereafter. And its doctrine of 
the resurrection of a body — not this body, 
but a " spiritual," yet in some sense or de- 
gree analogous to the natural one — gives, 
to our weakness at least, a certain solidity 
to the conception. 

This glorious prospect, does it seem 
incredible, almost or quite ? But, indeed, 
everything beyond the trivial or familiar 
is well-nigh incredible ; we believe in part, 
and often in large part, because the oppo- 
site is still more improbable ; and then the 
soul puts the seal on what the reason has 
thus won. The more we think on almost 
anything of consequence, the more wonder- 
ful it becomes. Our existence here is tran- 
scendently wonderful. President Hopkins, 
methinks, has well said, " Live as long as 
we may during the eternal ages, I think 
we may say, — go where we may into the 
depths of infinite space, we shall never find 
a scene of things more strange and wonder- 
ful than we are in now. That there should 
be a future life under a different form can- 
not be more strange than that there should 
be the present life under its present form." 



EASTER: LIFE 143 

Vulgar wonder, as I may call it, or ordi- 
nary wonder, diminishes with familiarity ; 
thoughtful wonder increases. To the re- 
flective person, the things we see and han- 
dle every day, if reflected on long, become 
almost bewildering. 

This, then, is the great suggestion of to- 
day, — life, everlasting life. But let us most 
carefully remind ourselves that this is more 
than mere existence. "All that are in their 
graves shall hear his voice and shall come 
forth," — that is not the whole. Our text, 
with other passages, tells us more. " Be- 
cause I live ye shall live also." For Christ's 
disciples the endless existence is to be end- 
less life. Theirs is to be that life on which 
we have already pondered, — the kindling 
of all our powers, especially our moral pow- 
ers, the harmony of all, direct communion 
with God. Direct communion with God : 
" I saw no temple therein, for the Lord God 
Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of 
it." Jehovah's attributes are its walls; im- 
manuel is its shrine. The saved — are they 
not themselves pillars of it ? And that kin- 
dling and harmony of our powers means 
very much which we cannot yet conceive of. 



144 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

We think of hope as if it belonged to this 
world. Yet the intimations of Heaven which 
are given us in Holy Writ forbid our hasty 
parting with any conception of bliss so great 
as what is suggested by that word. " And 
now abideth " — remaineth as a permanent 
thing — "faith, hope, charity." We shall 
desire, and we shall expect, continued bless- 
ing. Faith, we are sure, will remain, but it 
will be a better, richer thing than here, and 
not merely because it is in measure turned 
into sight. That world is, emphatically, a 
real world. Here, " surely every man walk- 
eth in a vain show " to a great degree ; the 
things that are genuine here are not so 
much what the bodily eye sees as what, per- 
chance, it hinders us from seeing. There 
we shall be in a real, a solid world. 

" Because I live, ye shall live also," says 
our Lord. " I am the resurrection, and the 
life: he that believeth in me, though he 
die (as to the body), yet shall he live ; (yea) 
whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall 
never die." Death, in its full, its real mean- 
ing, shall never touch him. The body must 
perish, but he himself shall live forever. 
The body must decay and perish, and that 



EASTER: LIFE 145 

means a great deal, yet this sore evil and 
all other evils are not worthy to be com- 
pared with the glory which shall be re- 
vealed in us. As one who himself has 
been lately translated has said, " The best 
thino^s we have known on earth can be but 
small beginnings, little eyes and buds on 
the tree of life that look on to the real un- 
folding of all that life and love can mean." 

But we must live now in order to live 
then. We must live now in order to have 
uninterrupted life. This great blessing 
which is to be had by Christ's disciples 
must be had now, in its elements at least. 
Let us not construct an unreal world in 
our fancy, which may fade away like any 
other dream when we grow older, or at the 
touch of sorrow. Let not sorrow itself be 
the chief motive for our hope, though it 
may well lead to a right one. We are to 
be saved hereafter by union with Christ 
here. Indeed, it is by such union in this 
world that we are to have a truly helpful, 
an inspiring idea of the great salvation to 
come. We need an inspiring idea of the 
future life, one that impels us to be better, 



146 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

purer, more Christlike to-day; we need a 
helpful idea, that shall really comfort us, as 
mere fancies cannot. For the Gospel binds 
genuine consolation and godly character 
together. It has no consolations that en- 
feeble. It paints no pictures of luxurious 
ease in the future life. There will be de- 
lights ineffable, "fulness of joy, pleasures 
for evermore ; " but nothing in Christ's 
word encourages us to think that they will 
be largely separate from Christlike char- 
acter. " If it were not so, I would have told 
you," — these words, indeed, suggest a vast 
treasury of satisfaction for our longings. I 
cannot believe that these profound long- 
ings will be disappointed, but we may be 
sure that every satisfaction of such, every 
pleasure, every joy, will have its root in 
life, spiritual life. 

" Heaven," said a choice spirit, " heaven 
is for them who think of it." Yes, heaven 
is for them who think of it. And the real 
heaven is for them who think of the real 
heaven. Let us, dear friends, be of those 
who do so. And then — and then ! 



X 



RECONCILIATION: A CHIEF PROBLEM OF 
LIFE 

For it pleased the Father that in him [Christ] should all 
fulness dwell ; and, having made peace through the blood of 
his cross, by him to reconcile all things unto himself; by 
him, I say, whether they be things in earth, or things in 
heaven. — Col. i. 19, 20. 

In the first chapter of Ephesians we have 
similar words, but these have a still wider 
scope. 

This is one of the passages of Holy 
Writ which open a rift in the clouds of 
great yet glorious mystery above and around 
us. For a moment we get a glimpse of 
other worlds such as Scripture itself seldom 
gives. There were things in heaven, it 
would seem, as well as things upon the 
earth, which were, or, to say the least, 
might have been, out of perfect harmony 
with each other and with God. What those 
things were we are not told, nor does it 
seem possible to learn. Cloud-rifts are not 
easily described. 



148 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

Perhaps as plausible a guess as any is 
that when man broke with his Maker he 
broke with that Maker's loyal servants, the 
angels. But no one explanation commends 
itself to most. And our text does not speak 
of persons — whether angels or men — but 
of " things," and although this word may 
include persons, it suggests also principles, 
forces, elements, which were somehow 
brought, or in danger of being brought, 
into disharmony. What produced that lack 
of entire concord we do not know; the 
mention of Jesus' cross might seem to indi- 
cate sin, but that that was all we cannot 
say. It may be that, God having reconciled 
sinful man to Himself by Jesus' death, 
through the risen and ascended Lord in- 
carnate other things in heaven and earth 
fell into place, and a universal, perfect har- 
mony was now insured. 

My sole object in the use of this difficult 
passage for a text is to remind you that 
Reconciliation was a problem in the higher 
spheres ; that is, the Almighty deemed it 
needful to do that which should conciliate 
various if not opposing interests. 

Certain it is that our God is emphatically 



RECONCILIATION 149 

a Reconciler. In His very being, infini- 
tude and personality are conjoined. He is 
both immanent in Nature and transcen- 
dent. In providence we have natural laws 
and spiritual forces. His moral government 
over us blends truth, justice, and mercy. 
In Christ we see the same : in His being, 
human thoroughly, yet thoroughly divine ; 
in His work, individual, yet comprehensive 
as the world ; in His kingdom, which is, of 
course, one of absolute authority, yet of 
perfect freedom also. 

Now, if so for Father and Elder Brother, 
Reconciliation may well be a chief prob- 
lem for us, too. Our dual nature, body and 
soul, might hint as much. Whether as 
those who have to think, or as those who 
have to do, this is a part of our task; 
neither in thought nor in action is every- 
thing " simple " in all senses of the word, 
although at the final moment of decision 
a pure heart will commonly make our way 
plain. 

I have thought much moral as well as 
intellectual profit might be gained from the 
consideration of this subject. It is a truly 
practical one. 



I50 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

But what, exactly, is this problem? or 
what are we to reconcile ? I answer, in 
general, that ever and anon we discover 
two classes or sets of truths and duties, 
which are quite discrepant, and sometimes, 
at first view, mutually contradictory. We 
find lines of both which seem to approach 
continually, yet apparently never meet. As 
long as we look at one side only, all is 
plain enough ; but when we note and con- 
sider another side, that is plain also — or 
would be but for the haunting presence of 
the first. And yet both must be main- 
tained. 

It is comforting that some such questions 
are merely speculative, and that others do 
not concern our own duty, and we have not 
to decide them and cannot decide them 
for those whom they do concern. But yet 
not seldom there arise such, and some of 
them very practical, and practical for us ; 
and on which, postpone as we will, we 
must come to a definite conclusion. And 
we must recognize and honor both sides. I 
am not now speaking of difficult questions 
in general, questions which somewhat more 
light or aid from maturer minds vail bring 



RECONCILIATION 151 

to an easy settlement, but of those which 
draw deep, which involve fundamental prin- 
ciples, and which, perhaps, we can never in 
this world solve in a way entirely satisfac- 
tory to the intellect. 

Let us come now to some of the specific 
things which appeal to us for a decision. 
But let us consider such as most of us are 
directly interested in, and spend no time 
on those which might first occur to many 
persons — like absolute foreknowledge and 
entire free will. Nor will we now attempt 
to reconcile them. 

I name first, then, the claims of this life 
and those of the next. The Scriptures nat- 
urally and fitly dwell much on the latter, 
— if not so fully as we are apt to think. 
Christ was bringing " life and immortality 
to light ; " the time had come, perhaps we 
may say, when God would reconcile earth 
and heaven in this respect because He 
deemed that the race had been trained long 
enough for life in this world without any 
clear knowledge of the other. So by Christ 
it was now brought out plainly that there 
is another world. There, He taught, right- 
eousness reigns in undimmed lustre, — 



152 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

yea, impersonated righteousness, truth, and 
love shine forth in unclouded majesty. 

But we are for the present, here — on the 
earth. We have duties here. We belong to 
a complex system of things, to an organism. 
The clearer disclosure of heaven even in- 
creases in some degree the value of earth ; 
it does not merely give comfort in trouble, 
it enriches life in many ways ; it helps to 
interpret it, earth and heaven making a 
grander whole than men had known be- 
fore ; it adds new motive to effort, perse- 
verance, fortitude. We are here, I say, — 
here for an indefinite period, and here we 
are to remain until God calls us away. 

And we are to appreciate this world and 
try to appreciate it duly. Great and good 
Dr. Chalmers — a glory of Scotland in the 
first half of the nineteenth century — was 
reverent when he said at the sight of one 
of its lakes, " I wonder if there is a Loch 
Lomond in heaven ! " — as reverent as was 
saintly Charles Simeon of Cambridge, who 
knelt and prayed at the same sight. But I 
refer not to the earth's natural beauties or 
marvels ; the worldling, indeed, often neg- 
lects these. We are to appreciate friendship 



RECONCILIATION 153 

and affection. We are more in danger of 
not loving our kindred and friends enough, 
rather than too much ; it may be sadly late 
when we appraise duly those who love us. 
But I speak especially of opportunities, of 
opportunities for knowledge and mental dis- 
cipline, for activity, for service, — for inno- 
cent enjoyment itself. Large opportunities 
are often educative. Earthly success, rightly 
used, often aids in the formation of reli- 
gious character. Richard Baxter rejoiced in 
after years that he had failed of an appoint- 
ment at court which he had once earnestly 
sought, and he rejoiced wisely, we can easily 
believe. But with some other man it might 
have been different. We tread on danger- 
ous ground here, I know, — our Lord has 
expressly warned us against the danger of 
wealth and of favor ; and yet the fact only 
illustrates our subject — the problem of 
Reconciliation and its difficulty. Position 
can develop virtue. Certainly, the clear- 
sighted mother is not wrong to seek a thor- 
ough education for her son, even at the 
price of much self-denial, and the result 
commonly approves the wisdom of her act. 
Just as willfulness is apt to be really weak- 



154 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

ness of will, so men's misuse of this world 
very commonly arises, in great measure, 
from their failure to value it highly enough. 
They are sensual because they are weak in 
mind and soul. They listen to the baser 
voices because they do not hear the nobler. 
They live in the cellars of their nature 
because they really know nothing of its 
higher and better rooms. 

Very imperfectly have I sketched the 
claims of this life; it is a much larger 
thing than we commonly understand. But 
we must not forget, either, as we so easily 
do, the other life. This is only the portal 
to that; at its very best a noble portal, but 
no more. In duration, in opportunity, in 
blessedness, that utterly transcends this. 
We may connect them in our thought quite 
intimately, if we will, — as in some dwell- 
ings the hall is one of the more attractive 
apartments. But, after all, w^hatever we may 
do in our thought, our philosophy, the days 
come when we know that heaven must be 
better than earth. And generally it is not 
very long before we are sure which is the 
vestibule and which is the house — the 
home. Experience, if it does no.' always 



RECONCILIATION 155 

teach us to reason more correctly, enlarges 
our premises, and so we reach new and 
wiser conclusions. 

Another pair of qualities, on which I will 
not dwell so long, are simplicity and saga- 
city, — and with these, as very like, trustful- 
ness and prudence. For myself, I see no 
inconsistency between a large measure of 
either of these qualities with the one I have 
set in contrast with it. Fine examples of 
their combination we meet from time to 
time. The Lord Jesus was a perfect exam- 
ple. Yet, there are tendencies in them all 
which demand thouo^ht and care for their 
full harmony, with most of us, certainly. 
There can be no supreme character with- 
out a large degree of simplicity. A cer- 
tain childlikeness is indispensable. " Ye 
must become as little children," is a maxim 
for admission into the kingdom of heaven 
which is the true kingdom of earth as well. 
Straightforwardness, freedom from by-ends, 
faith in direct procedure — that such things 
mark a really high character is universally 
agreed. Frankness, sincerity, — what true 
parent does not urge them upon his child ? 



156 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

And yet — and yet, there is another side. 
When our Lord commissioned his apostles, 
teUing them that He was " sending them 
forth as sheep in the midst of wolves," 
He said, " Be ye innocent — simple — as 
doves," but He also said, " Be ye wise — or 
wary — as serpents ; " they would need both 
qualities. It is with painful truth that the 
good Addison writes, " When a man is 
made up wholly of the dove ... he very 
often discredits his best actions." We must 
admit the value, and often the great value, 
of " mother-wit," of a native and even of a 
cultivated quickness in discerning conse- 
quences, bearings, relations, and in deter- 
mining when to speak and when to keep 
silent, whether to do this or to do that or 
to do anything at all, though here one may 
easily overreach himself ; does not the cun- 
ning man fail oftener than the ingenuous 
one ? Yet we need both sagacity and sim- 
plicity. 

So, too, with trustfulness and prudence. 
The Bible exhorts to both. We are to 
go forth and onward in faith. We are 
to trust in our Heavenly Father as chil- 
dren trust in an earthly one ; without mis- 



RECONCILIATION 157 

givings and without admixture of craft. 
"Wherefore didst thou doubt ?" said our 
Lord to Peter on an occasion when the 
apostle not strangely faltered. But also 
there is a prudence which is genuine wis- 
dom. " A prudent man foreseeth the evil, 
and hideth himself," even when as " a right- 
eous man he is bold as a lion," as Jesus did 
more than once when He withdrew from 
immediate danger, and even, on one occa- 
sion, went beyond the borders of Palestine. 
And his apostle's exhortation is surely wise, 
*' Brethren, be not children in understand- 
ing ; howbeit in malice be ye children, but 
in understanding be men." 

These remarks, I know well, give a very 
inadequate idea of the broad scope of our 
subject, but they may lead to thoughtful- 
ness upon it. The duty and the privilege 
of prayer, with the duty and the privilege 
of effort, would illustrate it : " Pray (some 
one has said) as if all depended on God ; 
act as if all depended on yourself." " Work 
out your own salvation, for it is God that 
worketh in you," is not a complete exam- 
ple. Faith and truth are often unjustly 



158 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

regarded as hostile ; they are most inti- 
mately related ; and yet in themselves they 
might seem at times mutually exclusive; 
and authority and reason still more so. 
The claims of persons and the claims of 
principles supply, perhaps, a good illustra- 
tion of our theme. Prince Bismarck, " the 
man of blood and iron," gave an uncon- 
scious one when he said, "The impon- 
derables weigh heavier than all material 
weights." Love and conscience form an 
excellent instance. Revelation and science 
might seem to be another ; but the princi- 
ple of verification of which science makes 
so much is insisted on by the Gospel also, 
as in those " classic " words of our Lord 
Christ, " If any man will do God's will he 
shall know of the doctrine ; " so that even 
in method they are alike, as well as in the 
stress they lay upon truth. (" To this end 
was I born, and for this cause came I into 
the world, that I should bear witness unto 
the truth," said Jesus.) 

All the greater subjects and some of the 
lesser are illustrative of this Reconcilia- 
tion. For them the truth is a sphere, of 
which both halves must be considered. 



RECONCILIATION 159 

The old fable of the two knights seeing 
opposite sides of the same shield and dis- 
puting over them, is not adequate. A circle 
does not fully represent the case ; though 
it is true that with the circle as with the 
sphere, the point that is farthest away from 
another in one direction is nearest to it in 
the opposite direction. There is no genu- 
ine contradiction in the parts of real truth 
or of real duty. And I repeat my caution 
that we do not confound most of the truths 
we need to know, or of the duties we need 
to perform, with the comparatively few 
instances when truths or duties seem to 
conflict with each other. But such in- 
stances there are, for some if not for all. 

I have limited myself at this time to in- 
stances of a so-called " practical " nature. 
But we are summoned by our Maker to 
consider intellectual questions also, so far 
as time and capacity allow ; to do so is 
eminently practical likewise. Let me say, 
then, that with these too we may be helped 
by the remembrance of our present theme. 
Serenity, certainly, and peace may be ours. 
Are we not sometimes inclined — shall I 



i6o CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

say " tempted " — to deem truth better 
represented by an ellipse with two " foci " 
than by a circle with its single centre, by 
an ellipsoid rather than a sphere ? Let 
us accept the fact that truth is often the 
union of truths exceedingly diverse, some- 
times quite discrepant and all but contra- 
dictory to each other. Absolute contradic- 
tion, I suppose, we not merely ought not, 
but cannot really receive; and yet, for a 
while, at least, truth may appear so. For 
myself I avow that I have been much 
helped by such an acceptance. And then 
a glimpse of the solution of a problem may 
come! 

Let us at the same time learn the les- 
son of charity. If to say boundless charity 
seems excessive, can we think of a better 
statement? One who really knows the 
truth cannot but have it. " Truth must not 
be sacrificed to charity " '^. Truth of spirit 
includes love, humility, righteousness, and 
must not be sacrificed to anything. Well 
has it been said, " Out of conflict truth 
is born. And they who from love of truth 
have taken different sides in those disputes 
which, above all other interests, seem to 



RECONCILIATION i6i 

have for a time the power of absorbing 
men's minds and rousing their passions, 
do well to carry their thoughts onward to 
the invisible world, and there behold, as in 
a glass, the great teachers of past ages, 
who have anathematized each other in 
their lives, existing together in the commu- 
nion of the same Lord." 

Finally, let us take from our text this 
thought and lesson : " Having made peace 
through the blood of his cross," we read ; 
the way of reconciliation for us, then, — is 
it not the way of self-denying love ? 

" O send out thy light and thy truth ; let 
them lead me." 



XI 

CHRISTIAN AGNOSTICISM 

For now we see through a glass, darkly ; but then face to face : 
now I know in part ; but then shall I know even as also I am 
known. — I. Cor. xiii, 12. 

" Through a glass " — by means of a mirror; 
"darkly" — literally, in a riddle. (Three 
centuries and more later than this, St. 
Augustine tells us that men could not see 
their own faces, so imperfect, it would seem, 
were the mirrors of the time. The things 
that most concern us are the hardest of all 
to understand, it might appear — except 
our duty ! ) 

Every age has made this confession. St. 
Paul, even, had to make it. Mysteries — 
mysteries ! Why is it thus ? and thus ? The 
burden of the Book of Job is the wail of all 
time. 

I will speak, this evening, on the chief 
sources of our ignorance of the " great prob- 



CHRISTIAN AGNOSTICISM 163 

lems " of existence, as we rightly call them, 
and then say something on one chief cure 
of it. 

I name first, then, the limitations of our 
faculties. It Is by no means sure that our 
bodies are not more or less hindrances in 
this respect. Certain it is that we fail to per- 
ceive the grand inner forces. We see phe- 
nomena, and we draw conclusions ; that is 
all. For example, gravitation or life : we 
see their effects, but not themselves — not 
"face to face." So there are great moral 
forces which we cannot perceive. We Infer 
their existence, but their real and their rela- 
tive power we cannot estimate, for we can- 
not see them. 

This is eminently true of God — the 
grand spiritual Force. Job said, " Behold, I 
go forward, but he is not there ; and back- 
ward, but I cannot perceive him; on the 
left hand, where he doth work, but I cannot 
behold him : he hideth himself on the right 
hand, that I cannot see him." Out of sight 
— His existence is known, but Himself we 
cannot discern. We do not know Him " as 
we are known " by Him. We cannot con- 
ceive powers different in kind, — for exam- 



i64 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

pie, creative power, — to say nothing of 
powers so much greater. 

Moreover, our faculties are too limited 
to determine what infinite "attributes" or 
qualities will achieve. We know that infi- 
nite love is love, though infinite, — nay, 
more intensely so because infinite ; yet who 
can say what infinite love will do in all 
cases .f^ Even finite love will punish, as a 
father his child ; and infinite love has pun- 
ished the guilty. We know not God, then, 
fully. We do not comprehend, though we 
apprehend Him. 

Consider also other worlds, to which we 
cannot see and of which we know nothing. 
Weigh the facts of astronomy ; worlds in- 
numerable, peopled, perhaps, a few, if not 
quite all. That nineteen twentieths of the 
starlight we enjoy comes from stars in- 
visible to the unaided eye is suggestive in 
this as in other ways. God's plan for us 
may embrace other orbs. " There is joy," 
we are told, " in the presence of the angels 
of God over one sinner that repenteth;" 
we read also, " which things the angels de- 
sire to look into." If ignorant because we 
do not see, how much more we go astray 



CHRISTIAN AGNOSTICISM 165 

with a false theory ; for example, as ex- 
pressed in the words, — 

" We for whose sake all Nature stands, 
And stars their courses move." 

Add to these considerations the fact of 
the "two eternities," — behind and before 
us, which we are not able to survey. The 
earth's orbit, we are told, will occupy twice 
twelve thousand years in passing from an 
ellipse into an (almost) circle, and this may 
be called the dial plate of time, and of time 
only, so that if a thousand years be counted 
an hour on that dial, the very oldest of us 
has but a few moments on the earth, and 
especially so for the study of great prob- 
lems, our chief business being to practice 
what we know. Is it strange — would it 
not be strange otherw ise — that there are 
mysteries ? 

Again, God has not disclosed to us His 
design, what we may call His plan. Even if 
our faculties were not limited as they are, 
yet, unless we were strictly infinite in know- 
ledge, we could not well know the plan of 
God unless revealed to us. You are, one 



t66 christian PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

of you, an architect. For some few min- 
utes I visit the edifice you are erecting. 
Vast and intricate as I find it, how can I 
be otherwise than perplexed if you do not 
inform me of your design, whether it is of 
exchange, temple, palace ? 

And so in this case. We come into ex- 
istence in the midst of God's ages-long 
work, spend a few short years, of which we 
devote little time to its study ; even if we 
know " the general idea," how can we know 
the plan of God, since He has not divulged 
it.? 

In the great war for the Union we w^re 
in, was it our generals' strategy to take 
Richmond, the Confederate capital, or to 
gain the geographical centre of the nation 
in Eastern Tennessee and the adjacent 
region ? Unless we knew that, we could 
not understand their methods. And if con- 
fused because we do not know the Divine 
strategy, how much more when we adopt 
some wrong notion of it ? And yet this has 
been often done. Mere happiness has been 
thought to be the object of the plan ; and 
this when innumerable facts contradict it. 
" Beloved, think it not strange concerning 



CHRISTIAN AGNOSTICISM 167 

the fiery trial which is to try you, as though 
some strange thing happened unto you ; " 
and the inspired writer goes on, " But re- 
joice inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's 
sufferings ; " even the Son of God has suf- 
fered. Blessedness rather than happiness ; 
holiness and blessedness, like twin stars. 
Discipline, education, training is one of 
the wheels of the chariot which God's sov- 
ereign goodness guides. 

Once more, consider our position. We 
are on the earth, with frames thereto 
adapted. Hence our reasonings have of 
necessity a certain earthly character. We 
argue, all of us, more or less from analogy, 
and naturally we draw our comparisons 
from the objects around us. Single words, 
metaphysical words even, have a physical 
tinge, — for example, apprehend ; and when 
we weave these words into sentences whose 
object is, consciously or unconsciously, to 
illustrate the things invisible by the things 
that are seen, what an earthly cast is thrown 
over our reasonings ! 

No doubt we are assisted thereby in 
some respects, largely and indispensably. 



i68 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

Archbishop Trench has well said : " There 
is a harmony between the natural and spir- 
itual worlds, so that analogies from the 
former are something more than illustra- 
tions." " The things on earth are copies of 
the things in heaven." " This entire moral 
and visible world from first to last, with its 
kings and its subjects, its parents and its 
children, its sun and its moon, its sowing 
and its harvest, its light and its darkness, 
its sleeping and its waking, its birth and its 
death, is from beginning to end a mighty 
parable, a great teaching of supersensuous 
truth, a help at once to our faith and to 
our understanding. But," the same gifted 
writer justly adds, " but at present this 
natural world has in some measure lost 
in fitness " for its original work. " This 
whole constitution of things earthly shares 
in the shortcoming that cleaves to all which 
is of the earth. Obnoxious to change, 
tainted with sin, shut in within brief limits 
by decay and death, it is often weak and 
temporary when it has to set forth things 
strong and eternal." 

And yet, as I have said, we reason thus 
both in our words and in our ideas. " For 



CHRISTIAN AGNOSTICISM 169 

now we see through a glass, darkly," — re- 
ferrine to the metal mirrors then used — 
" for now we see by means of such a mirror, 
indistinctly." Just so to us, our compari- 
sons are but as mirrors, reflecting the truth, 
but only reflecting it, — aiding us greatly 
and often very greatly, but leaving many 
things in shadow and nearly or quite un- 
seen. And " darkly," — literally in a riddle, 
which may be either hard or easy. We 
argue from imperfect analogies ; for exam- 
ple, we are neither God's subjects only, nor 
His children only, and yet we reason as if 
one or the other were exactly true. We 
cannot comprehend God's relation to us 
better than we could the parental if we had 
not experienced it. 

Another fact of our position is that we 
are under authority. A subject can scarcely 
be expected to appreciate the laws of his 
king ; he occupies a different relative posi- 
tion, — looking up instead of down. They 
touch his rights, and impose duties. Hence 
at least a different importance of this or 
that, in his view, from what exists in his 
ruler's. The college student, however can- 
did and well disposed, finds it hard to view 



lyo CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

certain rules with their applications just as 
his professor does, and not merely because 
he is less wise, but because they require 
something of him. Wealthy tax-payers are 
apt to take a different view from those who 
impose the taxes for, say, sanitary improve- 
ments. 

Now this is our condition. We are ruled 
over : both directed to do and directed for. 
And this makes it harder for us, even sup- 
posing our faculties competent to under- 
stand God's way, — to see it in its simple 
excellence with nothing strange, mysteri- 
ous in it ; and extremely difficult unless we 
are pure of heart. 

And this leads me to name as a last 
reason our imperfections of character. 

We have seen that the limitations of our 
faculties, the fact that God has not dis- 
closed to us His " plan," and our position 
unite to produce a vast ignorance on our 
part. It is not at all remarkable, then, that 
the greatest thinkers, ancient or modern, 
have left the problems of our existence 
unsolved. The apostle Paul himself, in the 
text, speaks with a modesty which may 
well put to silence some who loudly claim 



CHRISTIAN AGNOSTICISM 171 

to be his special disciples. And for most 
of us the question arises, — May not a cer- 
tain Christian Agnosticism be our fitting 
intellectual attitude " until the day break 
and the shadows flee away " ? But now 
when sin complicates the matter, how very 
much worse it becomes ! For sin blinds 
the mind ; corrupting the affections, it sug- 
gests or magnifies or depreciates impor- 
tant considerations, and colors the media 
through which we gaze. In earthly affairs, 
some men have color-blindness ; and all of 
us, more or less, towards God. 

To see this more plainly, think what 
sin's opposite, love, would do for us. And 
I take this line of thought the more readily 
because our text occurs, you remember, in 
a hymn (as it has been well called) to holy 
Love, and especially in order to impress 
the idea that hereafter not enlarged fac- 
ulties merely or expanded knowledge or 
changed position, but purified hearts, also, 
will help us to know. Love gives insight, 
for in truths we see through our sympathies 
as well as with the understanding. Love 
to God brings us into sympathy (so to say) 



172 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

with God. It enables us to see things 
somewhat as He sees them, — His rights, 
claims, interests, kingdom, that welfare of 
His creatures on which His heart is set. 
Could we feel in measure as the old psalm- 
ist did, " Rivers of waters run down mine 
eyes because men keep not thy law," it 
would put a different face on many matters. 
Besides, God is love, and if we have love 
we shall of course be in accord with Him 
who orders affairs. Love to men leads us 
to regard their true interests. It destroys 
partiality, that frequent fault of the affec- 
tionate. It destroys mere fondness. It 
looks at the highest interests of all. Love 
will surely save us from some egregious 
mistakes. 

Love is light. Love and Life are light 
indeed. I shall speak more fully on this in 
my next sermon ; to-day I add but a few 
words. 

I have said that a cause of our ignorance 
is our position ; our position as under 
obligation, but love to God relieves the 
painful pressure of obligation ; our position 
on the earth, but love rectifies our para- 
bolic reasonings — gives light and shade. 



CHRISTIAN AGNOSTICISM 173 

fixes our attention on things otherwise un- 
noticed. We correct our bodily vision by 
a judgment; so love corrects. 

I have said that a source of our igno- 
rance is found in the limits of our powers ; 
but love, like genius, kindles its own light. 
So virtually it expands our powers. 

I have said that God has not revealed 
His design. " But the secret (or the 
friendship, the intimate friendship) of the 
Lord is with them that fear him," and 
friends divine things that strangers do not 
guess. So may we learn, not by direct re- 
velation, but in part from the fact that love 
in us is in unison with love in Him; and 
as it was love in Him that drew the plan 
of His government, so love in us reads it 
in part. How much more quickly one in- 
terprets a letter when his sentiments and 
spirit are in sympathy with the writer's ! 

In like manner I might show that holi- 
ness, purity — the other side of love, so to 
speak — in us will bring us into harmony 
with that holiness w^hich shapes affairs. 
And is it not natural evil, suffering, pun- 
ishment, that shocks us, too commonly, 
rather than sin ? So with truth, too ; when 



174 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

we shall come into complete affiance with 
Him who is the truth, we shall understand 
the truth far better. 

Love, then, helps at every point, while 
sin complicates every one — aggravating 
every perplexity. The mysteries of Provi- 
dence arise greatly from our selfishness in 
its various forms of self-will, self-compe- 
tency, and self-seeking. How greatly we 
desire knowledge, even sacred knowledge, 
for our own sakes merely, and not to be 
either better or more useful ! We are not 
in full sympathy with man or with God — 
the infinite love, truth, and holiness — who 
rules the world. 

But it need not be so. We are divinely 
taught that life is light ; and our Lord has 
said, " I am come that they might have life, 
and might have it abundantly." We must 
not be even Christian agnostics — unless, 
indeed, we are very Christian ! And so the 
apostle Paul says in our text itself, " Now 
I know in part." His sobriety, as I have 
said, may properly make us diffident. But 
" we know in part " (verse 9) ; we know 
something. Not all that we would exceed- 
ingly like to know; not all that may be 



CHRISTIAN AGNOSTICISM 175 

extremely important to us hereafter; not 
all, perhaps, that might be very useful to 
us here, for who of us has made the most 
of his opportunities to learn ? — to say no- 
thing of our guilty deficiencies in charac- 
ter; yet something, even much. For as 
Paul reminded the Athenians, ancient 
poetry, even, afHrmed that we are God's 
" offspring," and Christian prose, through 
Paul's own lips, has taught us that we are 
His " beloved children," and has summoned 
us to "imitate" Him. And as St. John 
says, " We know that the Son of God is 
come, and hath given us an understanding 
that we may know him that is true." 

It certainly becomes us to be modest 
exceedingly. Yet Christianity is Christ 
rather than Christian thought, and we may 
all " know him whom we have believed." 



XII 

"LIFE ABUNDANTLY" 
(Before the Sacrament.) 

... I am come that they might have life, and that they 
might have it more abundantly. — John x. io. 

These words occur in our Lord's allegory 
of the Good Shepherd. They are a part of 
a verse. The whole verse is : " The thief 
Cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and 
to destroy : I am come that they might have 
hfe, and that they might have it more abun- 
dantly." His object is destruction ; mine, 
salvation, — nay, more than mere deliver- 
ance, Life, 

A moment on the word " life." Physically 
speaking, it has been said that " as soon as 
we are born we begin to die ; " and in natu- 
ral science one has averred that the best 
definition of life is " the sum of the forces 
which resist death," the thought being that 
the tendency to death — the pressure to- 
wards it — is so strong and general that the 



"LIFE ABUNDANTLY" 177 

wonder is that we live at all and not that 
we die. These statements are one-sided, yet 
there is a truth in them ; and there is a 
parallel to that which they affirm, in our 
moral and spiritual being. So much the 
more precious are our Saviour's words, — "I 
am come that they might have life." As to 
this life of the spirit, I will only say now 
that it is most essentially love, but includes 
all the effects of that and everything which 
is favored by that or naturally goes with it, 
— like peace and joy. 

There is, then, a vigorous religious exist- 
ence possible for us, Christ's disciples. This 
is my first suggestion. Now, this thought 
is most helpful in order that we may look 
forward hopefully, that is, with true or 
genuine hope. Changes are coming which 
we cannot anticipate, or cannot measure in 
advance. Christ's sheep are to be attacked 
by new enemies, — " grievous wolves," as 
Paul called them. Our Lord Himself spoke 
of false teachers as wolves in sheep's cloth- 
ing. Such, doubtless, there are to be in the 
future as in the past ; the Church must 
expect it. But I have in mind now, more 
especially, changes and dangers, perhaps 



178 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

grave, to which we are individually exposed. 
Every one must look for them. How are 
we to meet them boldly, or at least calmly ? 
Not so much by reasoning as otherwise. 
There are reasons, such as : God has 
helped me so far, and I may trust that " as 
my days, so shall my strength be." But 
there is more in a vigorous life to inspire 
hope, — there is that which puts force into 
the reasons themselves. 

Then again, a robust Christian life en- 
ables us to estimate the present rightly, 
enables us to appreciate and enjoy it in due 
degree. 

" Evermore in thy spirit 
Say to thyself it is good, yet there is better than it ; 
This that I see is not all, and this that I do is but little, 
Nevertheless it is good, thotigh there is better than it." 

The present — we do it scant justice. 
As it is harder to " rejoice with those that 
rejoice " than to " weep with them that 
weep," so, it often seems, it is harder to 
deal fairly with the present than with either 
the past or the future. Yet for most it 
means a fair measure of health, means soci- 
ety and friends, and sympathy that we can 
give as well as receive, and a thousand 



*'LIFE ABUNDANTLY" 179 

things in nature and life, the care of God 
for us also, the help of Christ, and hope 
immortal besides, some discipline, in all 
likelihood, but one that, if we will, " yield- 
eth peaceable fruit." Yes, a vigorous life 
in Christ gives a blessing to the present 
time, for He leads His flock " beside wa- 
ters of rest." By it the passing days are 
indeed made more precious ; they are illu- 
mined, so to speak. Earthly care may be 
converted into heavenly discipline — is so 
converted by patience, courage, hope, and 
faith. And these are things which come by 
our Lord's help. 

Yet again, it is even wonderful how per- 
plexities can be escaped or be solved by a 
vigorous religious life, and these perplex- 
ities are among the chief evils of the 
present. Of escaping them we do not think 
enough. " The eagle that flies through the 
sky is not worried how to cross the rivers." 
Does he always note them ? The great 
expanse of earth is one to him, and not 
broken up into hill and dale, stream and 
sea, as it is. to us. Nor the eagle alone. 
More than we think, perhaps, we already 
escape perplexity if we are living Chris- 



i8o CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

tians. But what if our high purposes were 
stronger still, and were more simple ? Our 
Lord Jesus must have seen everything in 
human life, and must have estimated every 
good thing in it aright. All innocent things 
that appeal to us He knew, and felt the 
value of them all. And yet how single His 
life was! He never vacillated; He was 
never confused for an instant. This may be 
ours also in our measure. As I have said, 
it is not the eagle only that is untroubled 
by the things below; the dove, too, the 
carrier pigeon (you remember) , — 

" High she shoots through air and light, 
Above all low delay, 
Where nothing earthly bounds her flight, 
Nor shadow dims her way." 

" I am come that they might have life." 
I quoted at the beginning the saying that 
the moment we are born we begin to die. 
But in the spiritual realm the moment we 
are " born from above " we begin to live. 
True, there is apt to be a certain definite 
trend to decay. In most of us, no doubt, 
old and evil habits of thought, sentiment, 
and feeling persist. But these things need 
not destroy. Rightly used, they may even 



"LIFE ABUNDANTLY" i8i 

have a conservative value, — the daring 
spirit, for example, or the hasty temper, — 
if kept impregnated with life. And life in 
Christ is mightier than decay and death. 
As the body, for a long period, may be 
renewed, we are told, every few years and 
grow stronger in the process, so the soul 
can continually gain in vigor, even if com- 
pelled to struggle with the downward ten- 
dency, until at last it shall come off more 
than conqueror by taking that captive. 

But our Shepherd, you note, said more 
than life, — more than the power of resist- 
ing the evil, and better than that, — "life 
abundantly." There are good things that 
go with vigorous living and that react to 
make it stronger still. " Life abundantly ! " 
There is so much in that phrase and fact ! 
For one thing, where it is it sets one in- 
quiring after what more there may be. 
Love and life are wonderfully and most 
beautifully blended in the Scriptures. Love 
suggests, perhaps, repose ; if we love God, 
we rest in Him. But there is another ele- 
ment there. " Love in the Bible is not so 
much an action of the soul as it is a qual- 
ity in the soul. The love of God is a new 



i82 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

nature — a new fibre, a new fineness 
and responsiveness in the soul itself," said 
Phillips Brooks. If love is repose, life is 
responsiveness. It is sensitivity to happy- 
influences from without. Our life is not 
by love only — not directly, at least. We 
live by admiration and by hope also ; rev- 
erence is a grand motive power in true liv- 
ing, and preeminently so is a quick sense 
of duty. Life is the atmosphere in which 
love thrives, in which love lives. Life and 
love — let them intertwine and blend in 
our souls. 

Life, love, and light are words and con- 
ceptions that go together in Scripture. We 
are taught in the Old Testament to sing, 
"With thee is the fountain of hfe; in 
thy light shall we see light." And again, 
" Light is sown for the righteous (What 
a marvelously fine conception, — a harvest 
of light!), and gladness for the upright in 
heart." And although in this case light and 
gladness are, perhaps, mainly the same, 
the joy here is one that springs from the 
solution of mysteries and the revelation of 
God's good providence for His people. In 



"LIFE ABUNDANTLY" 183 

the New Testament we read that in Christ 
"was life, and the Hfe was the Hght of 
men." 

I said last Sunday night that little as 
we now know because " we see through a 
glass " or as " by a mirror," we are not 
entirely agnostics, though Christian ones, 
and I urged that love is a revealer. In 
this life itself, where it is so imperfect, we 
know something, — " we know in part." 
And in the world to come it will not be 
the change of conditions only or chiefly 
that will enable us to " know even as we 
are known," but especially love and life, 
love and life in their heavenly fullness, in- 
habiting our souls. If in any sense nearer 
to the Lord in position than we are now, 
it will yet eminently be because our vision 
shall be clarified by these that " we shall 
see him as he is." 

Even in this present life, then, we may 
find a larger real knowledge — a know- 
ledge, that is, which gives us what know- 
ledge is mainly of value for — by means of 
the very clouds which seem to hinder us 
from seeing. At length we may recognize 
that our darkness is from excess of light ! 



i84 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

Till then let us be preparing for the supreme 
joy by that loving activity in duty and ser- 
vice which is so clearly the effect of a 
living love. 

" I am come that they might have life 
abundantly." I will not say that I some- 
times think that many are in danger of 
emphasizing love, not too much, yet dis- 
proportionately. I do not say that, for love 
and life are most vitally connected ; life is 
love and whatever other excellent things 
there are that go with it, — loyalty to truth, 
for instance. But it is very needful for us 
to emphasize the word " abundant " duly. 
As we have already seen of a vigorous life 
generally, it more than saves us from evil 
to possess an abundantly vigorous one, 
for it enables us to assimilate healthfully 
some otherwise noxious things, — a thought 
full of cheer and strength. Indeed, the 
world with its complexities — dangerous, 
many of them — is made for life to occupy, 
the world of affairs and the world of men. 
There is a singularly beautiful adjustment 
between the objects around us and life 
righteous and robustly so. We misinter- 



"LIFE ABUNDANTLY" 185 

pret them because we overlook this. We 
wrongly judge earth's experiences, trials, 
temptations even, when we forget the ad- 
justment, — much as we might misconceive 
this physical world if we knew nothing 
of its atmosphere. A great naturalist has 
been misunderstood, he tells us, in a re- 
mark of his about the eye, because he 
spoke of its imperfections by itself simply ; 
for its object, he says, it is truly admira- 
ble. So this is a world which is made to 
live in — made for life and abundant life. 
And our Lord Christ has seen what we 
need, and has come, He assures us, to give 
it. 

We are in the presence of the tokens of 
a life sacrificed. Let me say, then, that the 
abundant gift which He who sacrificed it 
bestows can fit us to meet death — the sol- 
emn end of our existence here, to which at 
first thought life appears directly opposed. 
Horrible, even, that may seem in itself, but 
may we not come to think that, if we might, 
we would not escape the common fate 1 

In the spirit of the gentle soul who 
wrote, — 



i86 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

" I ask not that for me the plan 
Of good or ill be set aside, 

But that the common lot of man 
Be nobly borne and glorified," 



quietly, even shrinkingly, may we not feel 
that we would go like our fellow-men. " Let 
me die with my people," we may say, — 
"with my brethren, with the great Human 
Family of which I am a single part ! " We 
may do so the more readily because the 
Giver of life abundantly has done so ; He 
has identified Himself with our race and 
accepted dying, and so we also, putting our 
hand in His, will bow our heads peacefully 
to the last enemy — and great friend. Does 
not this communion service suggest that ? 
"Forasmuch then as the children are par- 
takers of flesh and blood, He also — Jesus 
— Himself took part of the same, that 
through death He might deliver them w^ho 
through fear of death were all their lifetime 
subject to bondage." 

Only one thing more, my friends; the 
abundant life is for all. Not the worlds 
gifted only, but the lowliest can enjoy it ; 
many, many have found it so, God be 
praised ! But for it everything, when neces- 



"LIFE ABUNDANTLY" 187 

sary, must be sacrificed. " The kingdom 
of heaven," said our Saviour (you remem- 
ber), " is like a merchantman seeking goodly 
pearls, who, when he had found one pearl 
of great price, went and sold all that he had 
and bought it." So must it be with us. Is 
it not impossible, otherwise, from the nature 
of the case ? 

In some real sense the sheep gives itself 
to the shepherd ; and we must surrender 
ourselves to the Shepherd of our souls. 
And so we find life here below, and life 
consummate and eternal in the world to 
come. 

And this is what we want. Hope that 
aspires to our Father, God — let us be glad 
if we have it ; faith that rests in Him — 
let us be grateful for that ; love that binds 
us to Him and to His children also — it is 
an unspeakable blessing. Yet a living hope, 
a living faith, a living love, — this, dear 
friends, is what we indeed need, and it is 
our transcendent need ! 



XIII 

LOYALTY TO LAW 

Who have said, With our tongue will we prevail ; our lips 
are our own ; who is lord over us ? — Psalms xii. 4. 

With or without some bitter experience 
of his own, David deplores the prevalence 
of arrogant self-assertion. " Who is lord 
over us ? " " We recognize no authority. 
We can and will do as we choose." This 
temper is not manifested in words only ; it 
often exists among the most taciturn. 

My subject this evening is Loyalty to 
Law, especially as a trait of character. It 
includes God's law emphatically. I have 
lately read of one who was a private soldier 
in our Union army during the great war. 
He says : " I never had such rest of mind 
as while I was in the army. The sergeant 
settled everything for me. Every morning 
he gave me my orders : ' Guard to-day ; ' 
'Fatigue to-day;' 'Policing to-day;' 'In- 
spection to-day; ' ' Picket to-day; ' ' March- 



LOYALTY TO LAW 189 

ing to-day.' That was enough. All that I 
had to do was to obey orders. But now I 'm 
worrying all the time whether I ought to 
do this or that. I wish I had somebody to 
tell me my duty plainly." This indicates 
an extreme state of feeling, yet may serve, 
for that reason, all the better for an illus- 
tration. But the spirit which I wish to urge 
is a quite different one. It is loyalty to law, 
and not subjugation by a fellow being ; or 
I might say that it is subjection to law, 
and not subjugation by it. It is as much 
opposed as that other to willfulness. But 
it is different ; it is what we may call the 
characteristic American spirit, that is, the 
fitting one for the inhabitant of a free 
country like ours, — loyalty to law instead 
of rulers. It is not inconsistent, of course, 
with deference and obedience to those who 
are rightfully over us. But the prominent 
idea in it is law, and the authority of that. 
No matter whether it be God's law directly 
or man's, because, in so far as it is right- 
eous human law, it is really God's also; 
having been made by those whose office it 
was to make it, and not being opposed to 
His holy will, it has the authority of a law 



I90 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

of His. But the great principle is the au- 
thority of law. 

We are, many of us, familiar with that 
grand sentence of Hooker's : " Of Law, 
there can be no less acknowledged than 
that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice 
the harmony of the world; all things in 
heaven and earth do her homage, the very 
least as feeling her care, and the greatest 
as not exempted from her power; both 
angels and men and creatures of what con- 
dition soever, though each in different sort 
and manner, yet all, with uniform consent, 
admiring her as the mother of their peace 
and joy." It is allegiance to this — it is the 
spirit and habit of loyalty to law — which 
I wish to urge this evening, especially as 
opposed to that willful temper which says, 
or feels, " Who is lord over me ? " 

And the first reason I adduce for it is 
that it is right, " Children," says the Apos- 
tle Paul, " obey your parents in the Lord, 
for this is right." And so of the general 
spirit and habit of obedience to law, I af- 
firm that it is right. For we were made to 
live under law. No created being is exempt 
from this. Indeed, the fact of law of some 



LOYALTY TO LAW 191 

sort is stamped on all things. It is even 
a commonplace that the glacier and the 
humble flower by its side, the mountains 
and every grain of sand, the seas and each 
drop of water testify to it. What are sci- 
entific men doing but proving that ? They 
are like a company of miners, working from 
one end of a tunnel to meet another com- 
pany (in this case the theologians) working 
from the other. 

Our bodies, too (need I add ?), bear con- 
stant witness to it. And although a law of 
nature is one thing, and a law of morals 
quite another, we soon find that they are 
nearer together than we had thought, for 
we learn that there are natural laws which 
are violated at so much peril that we infer 
either insanity or depravity in those who 
are guilty of the violation. Men have no 
right to do thus or thus, we say in such 
cases ; and in some, the State is bound to 
interfere or to punish. 

We observe, too, in the obviously moral 
sphere, that each of us has a law within 
him. None of us would be completely 
made without it; he would be as really 
imperfect as if he were created without a 



192 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

will or without feeling. Nor can we con- 
ceive society without law. However rude or 
primitive its state, on certain points there 
are statutes, formal or informal, but well un- 
derstood. " Thou must," and " Thou must 
not " are prescribed for this and that action. 
Otherwise society would be intolerable. 

The fact is, we were made to live under 
a vast system of law, — personal, domes- 
tic, social, civil, political, international, as 
well as distinctly religious. The will of 
God and the claims of righteousness as 
therein expressed are indicated by it. It is 
in obedience to law, very eminently, that 
we do right. 

But now let us consider the value of this 
obedience, this loyalty, to character. 

It gives, for example, strength to charac- 
ter. For it brings one into conscious har- 
mony with infinite things and the Infinite 
One. Individuals are weak ; we are of yes- 
terday and are surrounded by objects far 
older than ourselves ; we are in the midst 
of mighty currents of human life and his- 
tory ; we have traitors in our own hearts. 
But law! It is from everlasting; it is 



LOYALTY TO LAW 193 

potent in everything; its seal is on our 
own natures. Surrendering ourselves to it, 
we gain something of its strength. Its ven- 
erableness, power, ubiquity give vigor to 
its humble but devoted friends and sub- 
jects. A character intelligently faithful to 
law is a strong character. 

And it is a symmetrical character. For 
righteous law is impartial. Its ways are 
eminently "just and equal." It has no 
favorites. Laying its claims, then, on every 
part of our being, loyalty to it develops 
every part. The conscience, the affections, 
all find some precepts or statutes, divine 
or human, requiring allegiance. So sym- 
metry is produced. 

Such a character, too, will be serene. 
The laws are serene. The laws of nature, 
whatever their occasional manifestations of 
another kind, are how reposeful ! So are 
all laws which are really such, being re- 
flections of the Divine mind. The human 
character, then, which is conformed to 
them, will grow into likeness to them in 
this. The vibrations and tempests and toss- 
ings of willfulness will die away. Com- 
posure will come instead. 



194 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

Very many of you will recall a note- 
worthy illustration of this in the Athenian 
sage, Socrates, who refused the entreaties 
of his friends that he should escape from 
the death to which the judges had con- 
demned him, an innocent man; he seemed, 
he said, to see and hear the laws of his 
country, imperfect as they were, expostu- 
lating with him and bidding him to remain 
and die. And obeying them, while his 
friends lamented, he was serene. Yet the 
laws of man have the marks of human 
weakness upon them ; but the laws of God 
are excellent indeed. 

Strength, symmetry, serenity, then, are 
marks of a character of which loyalty to 
law is a marked trait. Let me name also, 
as the poet-philosopher of our land did in 
his essay on Immortality, mental sound- 
ness and healthfulness. Health of mind, 
he even says, " consists in the perception 
of law. Its dignity consists in being under 
law. Nothing seems to me so excellent as 
a belief in the laws. It communicates 
nobleness." A willful mind is, more or 
less, an unsound one. It is unbalanced 
and capricious. So far as willfulness con- 



LOYALTY TO LAW 195 

trols it, it has unhappy elements in it, which 
will yet show themselves. 

It would be easy for me to find illustration 
and proof of what I have said, in familiar 
persons. Washington's is a conspicuous 
case. And we have but to recall contempo- 
raries of his, military and civil (Hamilton, 
for example), some of them brilliant and 
appealing more powerfully to our imagina- 
tion than he, who, failing in this quality, fail 
also of our reverence. 

But it may be said that a character 
marked by the trait I am urging is seldom 
an attractive one. " We love characters in 
proportion as they are impulsive and spon- 
taneous." But very much depends on what 
is shown by the impulsiveness and spon- 
taneity. It is not willfulness itself whose 
manifestations are long engaging. In a lit- 
tle child, indeed, and combined with that 
first unfolding of individuality which is so 
interesting, we may not be dissatisfied for 
a while, but as the years pass we are, and 
greatly so. The spontaneity of a character 
under law is very pleasing to us. 

But can there be such a thing .f^ Most 
certainly. It is not the control of rules, mere 



196 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

rules, which we are considering, however 
good that may be in its place ; it is not subju- 
gation by laws ; it is not even subjection to 
laws, superficially considered, to something 
purely external ; that may make a character 
quite estimable, yet quite unattractive. But 
it is the principle of loyalty to law, espe- 
cially if enriched by a filial temper towards 
the infinite source of law, — it is, I say, the 
principle of loyalty to law enthroned in the 
spirit, and manifesting itself spontaneously, 
often impulsively even, as occasion prompts. 
Such a principle will even violate rule, nay, 
law itself, if a higher law demands. Where 
that principle prevails, and in proportion 
as it prevails, one passes from under the 
mere " dominion " of law, and so, in a sense, 
" he is free from the law so far as he is 
free from the evil which the law restrains," 
for he keeps even pace with the law, so 
to speak, moving as it moves. If he slack- 
ens his gait, if (that is) the principle is weak 

— more or less — then it reminds him of 
its presence and calls for his obedience, 

— most happily for him. But the thing 
to be ever aimed at is the enthronement 
of loyalty to law in the soul. One of whom 



LOYALTY TO LAW 197 

this is true can afford to be spontaneous, 
as a willful person cannot. He can afford 
to speak freely and act naturally and think 
boldly. 

This trait of character is to be cultivated, 
then, because it is right, and because it is 
of indispensable value to character, giving 
it strength, symmetry, serenity, soundness, 
and even favoring spontaneity. But, once 
more, let us consider its service to the pub- 
lic welfare. 

Imagine the benefit of a general loyalty 
to law. First, the distinctly divine laws are 
honored and obeyed ; the authority of 
righteousness, truth, and love is recognized 
heartily. Then those other laws of His, 
which we distinguish as "the moral," — 
the great precepts which are so plainly 
written in the constitution of our physical 
being, in human life and history, — are ob- 
served, and temperance, moderation, and 
reasonableness are practiced. Next, the 
laws of our country are obeyed. In fine, — 
to name no more, — those great statutes 
which underlie these in very great degree, 
economic and social laws, receive due re- 



198 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

gard. How different the world from what 
it is now ! Virtue, and happiness as well, 
would everywhere prevail. Then, indeed, 
might the desire of ancient time be real- 
ized, — " that there be no breaking in, nor 
going out " to invade others' rights ; that 
there be " no outcry in our streets." It 
is the violation of law mainly which ren- 
ders the world sorrowful ; it is because its 
inhabitants so generally persist in going 
against known laws, the laws of nature, life, 
society, and God. 

In the last place, I urge the trait in ques- 
tion because it fits one to control others. 
Nearly every college man, sooner or later, 
comes into some position of rule over oth- 
ers. And he is incompetent to such a posi- 
tion unless he has the habit of subjection 
to law. If he is willful, he cannot rightly 
control his fellows. He is without an essen- 
tial quality for that. They know not what to 
expect — unless it be injustice. The parent 
whose will is not conformed to law, whose 
authority does not represent righteous- 
ness, is fatally defective. Allegiance to law 
must be the characteristic, and the obvious 
characteristic, of one who rules. For an 



LOYALTY TO LAW 199 

atmosphere of liberty is essential. You may 
secure a more perfect machine by repres- 
sion, but you cannot have living beings — 
children, youth, men — without freedom, 
and the ruled must be encouraged to think, 
choose, and act, freely. 

The subject which has occupied us to- 
night has many important applications. It 
is of special moment in a country like 
ours. " Who is Lord over us ? " is a sen- 
tence expressive of a very frequent thought 
and feeling. " What are you going to do 
about it ? " was the defiant reply of a noto- 
rious public robber to citizens who remon- 
strated with him; and this spirit of defi- 
ance he maintained until they did something 
very effective about it. Again, every citizen 
among us, even the humblest, is in his 
degree a ruler, controlling the conduct and 
also the happiness of others. We need, 
then, in this country eminently, a spirit of 
obedience to law. We can have it, as has 
been proved. The best men in Europe, 
such as the excellent German, Tholuck, 
doubted before the great war whether 
there could be such a thing as " loyalty " in 
this land without a king. They were satis- 



200 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

fied there could be when in 1861 the people 
rose up in a devotion to Fatherland — in- 
scribing upon their banners, " The Union, 
the Constitution, and the Laws " — which 
not even the Kaiser can evoke to-day. Oh, 
glorious era in the history of mankind, 
when Liberty and Law at last spoke with 
a common voice, — when the patriot needed 
not to resist authority, and the champion 
of authority needed not to slight freedom, 
but every blow for the one was an equal 
blow for the other ! The head of the nation 
stood before the world the representative 
of both ; Lincoln's heart and Grant's right 
arm maintained both ; and humanity all 
over the earth recognized the grand fact. 

Educated men need the spirit I am 
urging, for to them the less favored have a 
right to look for an example. Educated men 
need it as those who so often obtain an 
unusual position of rule ; that their rule 
may be beneficent, they need to be subject 
themselves, clearly and heartily, to law. 
Without it, as thinkers eyen, they are lia- 
ble to fail. They may easily be partisans. 
How many men decide no question with- 
out some bias ! Some other consideration 



LOYALTY TO LAW 201 

than appertains to it has concealed or un- 
conscious influence upon their decision. 
They are not wont to ask for the impartial 
authority of the laws, — the laws of God 
and man. They may plead the sacred name 
of " Conscience," indeed, but they confound 
it with will or passion. 

Even God, who might be thought out- 
side of law, but, as Hooker puts it better, 
in "whose bosom Law has her seat," — 
when He sent His Son into the world to 
redeem it, had Him, as we are told, " born 
under the law," — not only " born of a 
woman," and coming thus under all the 
conditions of the common humanity in 
general, but born specifically under the 
Jewish law, temporary as that was. And 
when Christ came He said, " Think not 
that I am come to destroy the law or the 
prophets ; I am not come to destroy but to 
fulfil." And again, in the midst of its per- 
verting and wicked interpreters, He said, 
" The Scribes and the Pharisees sit in 
Moses' seat. All therefore whatsoever they 
bid you observe, that observe and do, but 
do not ye after their works." 

" Under law to Christ," — here is the re- 



202 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

conciliation of the respective claims of law 
and freedom, of order and spontaneity, of 
authority and love. 

And so every theme leads us to Him ; 
every topic rightly considered draws us to 
One who is both Lord and Saviour. 



XIV 

HOPE 

The bringing in of a better hope, by the which we draw nigh 
unto God. — Heb. vii. 19. 

In the previous chapter the writer — who- 
ever he may have been, Paul or some other 
— had spoken of Christian hope as " an 
anchor of the soul." Now he says (I quote 
from the revision), "There is a disannul- 
ling of a foregoing commandment " (that 
is, the Jewish law about the priesthood) 
" because of its weakness and unprofitable- 
ness; and a bringing in thereupon of a bet- 
ter hope, through which we draw nigh unto 
God." Of this better hope I wish to speak 
this morning. But in preparation for it, let 
us first, for a few moments, consider the 
general subject of hopefulness. 

Practically all persons agree that a hope- 
ful temper is one of the chief endowments 
that man can enjoy. For, there is a bright 
view of affairs and prospects which under 
ordinary circumstances is more reasonable 



204 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

than a dark view, — which, then, is more 
often right than the other, and which, be- 
sides, gives much happiness both to oneself 
and to other people. Of course there is an 
extreme in this as in many things; but a 
more moderate disposition sees affairs more 
nearly as they are in this world of ours 
than does a sombre temperament. That a 
hopeful spirit gives courage and strength is 
familiar enough, but we may not note that 
it tends to realize its own cheerful expecta- 
tions. It detects possibilities which escape 
the sight of the opposite quality ; it sees 
points at which unpromising occurrences 
can be made fruitful of good, or at least 
harmless ; and of these opportunities it 
avails itself. Hope has eyes, as well as her 
sisters faith and charity, and God has so 
made the world that it is adapted to, and, 
for its best use, needs those eyes, even as 
the material universe is related to our bod- 
ily vision : a very important fact. He has 
so ordered things, I say, — He so conceals 
as well as reveals, — that hopefulness is nec- 
essary to dealing rightly with them. The 
man without it, or without a certain liberal 
measure of it, is incomplete ; he is not the 



HOPE 205 

wise man, or even the prudent man he is 
often fancied to be; he does not "see things 
as they are," although such an one often 
prides himself on so doing. He may see 
some things which the hopeful man fails to 
recognize ; but he exaggerates them or sees 
them out of their true relations, — " out of 
focus," — while others quite as real he over- 
looks. 

The view of the despondent man may 
sometimes be, in one sense, the right view 
for him : he failed, say, in an enterprise, 
and he expected to fail ; but his neighbor 
saw things as they truly were, as God 
meant them to be seen, he looked for 
success, and he succeeded. Even in days 
really dark he did not drag his boat ashore 
and put up his oars, but still floated ex- 
pectantly upon the waters and realized the 
implied promise, " It is good that a man 
should both hope and quietly wait for the 
salvation of the Lord." Such, then, very 
briefly stated, are some of the blessings 
of hope. It has been called by one and 
another, " the dream of waking man," but 
the philosopher Hume has more wisely 
said, *' A propensity to hope and joy is real 



2o6 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

riches ; while one to fear and sorrow is 
real poverty." 

Now how does the Gospel treat this 
priceless quality of hope ? Does it ignore 
it ? Does it depreciate it ? Or does it, 
while recognizing it or commending it, 
give us really something else, without the 
priceless advantages of what we mean by 
" hope " ? 

Jesus Himself says little of it directly, so 
far as the record goes, although- He implies 
it plainly. He was preaching in the syna- 
gogues, and wherever He spoke it was 
invariably to people who had the inces- 
sant drill of the Old Testament with its 
constant insistence upon hope : " Why art 
thou cast down, O my soul ? Hope thou in 
God ; " " Let thy mercy, O Lord, be upon 
us according as we hope in thee." But as 
soon as the Gospel was carried into the 
world without, it joined that — I speak of 
the nobler, " better hope," of course — with 
faith and charity, or love : " And now 
abideth faith, hope, love — these three." 
Christianity, then, puts it among funda- 
mentals ; along with the flint and granite 



HOPE 207 

it puts this mere limestone — this chalk, as 
some deem it ! — an original conception, 
truly, and most noble. In the Gospel hope 
is not merely not overlooked as an inferior 
principle or sentiment; it is not simply 
recognized as a powerful spring of action ; 
it is set, I repeat, by the side of faith 
and love. For it is kindred to them, it 
shares their life, and they, in their turn, 
draw strength from it. It can be distin- 
guished from faith, but can hardly be 
separated from it. Recall, too, that other 
passage which speaks of " the patience of 
hope " in the same breath with " the work 
or labor of faith and love." 

Note again, that hope as shown in the 
Bible connects man with God. " Hope 
thou in God," is the word ; " My expecta- 
tion is from Him " is the response we are 
taught to make. In the Scriptures hope 
is a confidence not merely in the issue 
of events, but, still more, in Him who is 
above and in them, orders them, and ac- 
complishes by them His blessed designs. 
Earthly hope is so often " the dream of 
waking man " because it neglects God, 
rests on things below Him, leaves Him out 



2o8 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

of view. It expects results from events 
whose working no finite mind can calcu- 
late. In truth (a remarkable fact), hope that 
is merely earth-born often leaves out of 
sight elements which true hope discerns; 
and thus, ceasing to deserve the precious 
name of hope, it is disappointed, while that 
which rightly wears the name is gratified. 
In other words, worldly hope is neither 
sister nor daughter to true faith, and so it 
forgets God ; and because it forgets God, 
either it is not confident enough, or it 
cherishes unwarranted expectations. 

Then again, genuine hope is, measurably, 
unselfish. " Love marks the difference be- 
tween genuine and false hope," says a choice 
thinker with very much truth. Faith, hope, 
and charity — love — stand together. And 
the reason why very many hopes are de- 
ceitful is that they have as little to do with 
love, disinterestedness, benevolence, as with 
faith or God. They are selfish desires and 
anticipations, and He who guides the world 
does not do it in the interests of selfishness 
or of any self-centred being. He rules in 
love, and that hope only is trustworthy 
which practically remembers the fact. Any 



HOPE 209 

other may enjoy, nay, help secure its ful- 
fillment, but must very commonly put up 
with disappointment. 

Need I more than hint that true hope, 
hope as the Gospel conceives and presents 
it, takes immortality into view ? And what 
a difference between the saying, worthy as 
it is, "While there is life, there is hope," 
and that other, "When mortal life ends, 
then hope's best fulfillment begins " ! 

So does Scripture deal with hope. It 
describes it, when genuine, as resting su- 
premely on God, as allied with benevolence, 
as fully realized in the eternal life. Nay, 
more, that on which I cannot linger just 
now but must not altogether omit, it de- 
scribes it as fostered by disappointment 
and disaster ; that which wounds, enfeebles, 
perhaps destroys ordinary hope, gives to it 
greater vigor. 

How different, then, this genuine hope 
from that which commonly goes by the 
name ! As different as true charity from 
mere good-nature. The Gospel takes com- 
mon hope and does with it as the skillful 
gardener deals with a wild fruit or flower 
when he trains it into something more 



210 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

beautiful, fragrant, useful. How different 
it becomes, a simple fact may show. Hope 
is generally deemed to be the especial pre- 
rogative of youth, but the "better hope" 
commonly blooms brightest in later years, 
for there is a hope of which youth knows 
almost nothing. It is one that has grown 
with the deepening consciousness of a God 
who rules the world in boundless wisdom 
and love, having a personal care for each 
of His creatures and causing all things to 
work together for good to His loving chil- 
dren. It is one that grows with experience. 
It is one that grows with our increasing 
estimation of reality above appearance, of 
righteousness above success, of the immor- 
tal spirit above self-seeking, of the common 
welfare above our own gratification. In 
earlier years it grew under the shadow, so to 
speak, of these principles, and was hidden 
in a degree ; in later, it blooms and bears 
fruit. And as merely earthly hopes decline, 
it draws their vigor into it, like a plant 
whose neighbors die and leave it to drink 
in the full nutriment of both sun and soil. 
It is this life's reward of trust in God, fidel- 
ity, and disinterestedness. 



HOPE 211 

But must we, then, despise what I have 
called earthly hope? By no means. We 
should strengthen it. We should also en- 
noble it. We are to purify it from selfish- 
ness, to elevate its view to God, and to 
extend its vision toward immortality. Still 
it is to be hope ; nay, more hopeful than 
before, for, as already indicated, true hope 
often sees encouragements which worldly 
hope overlooks. It often hears tones, so to 
speak, in the Father's voice, which assure 
it that His refusals, stern as they seem, 
are the refusals of a friend, and not of an 
enemy or a stranger. 

I wish, then, to recommend, yes, to urge 
this — I do not say worldly, but earthly 
hope as transformed by faith, love, and 
experience. In other words, I wish to urge 
a hope for and in this life, as well as the 
future life. There comes a time in almost 
every one's course when things look dark 
to him, and when in one aspect they are 
dark. Bereavement, ill health, a sudden 
turn of the road, — one thing or another, 
may be the cause. In such a case a merely 
earthly hope may wither (for a while at 
least) like a plant in a scorching sun. At 



212 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

such a time let us remember that there is, 
as our text says, a " better hope ; " if the 
former is " disannulled, there is a bringing 
in thereupon of a better." A new stalk 
may grow out of the old. 

I urge such thoughts because I am per- 
suaded that most people cherish hope too 
little. They neither have the cheer nor do 
the work which is possible to them. They 
live on too low a scale. A few years of 
youthful dreams, and they smile at what 
they deem their early folly, and preserve 
only that degree of hope which is all but 
unavoidable to humanity. But better, will 
say the truly wise man, — better some early 
dreams than none. And quickly and stead- 
ily let the young buds be ripened into some- 
thing more excellent, something on which 
the heart can feed, by surrounding the tree 
on which they grow w^ith faith and charity. 
Let us train ourselves to a hope which 
trusts in God and serves our fellow-men. 
We shall then have that which is strong 
indeed, strong as a staff to lean on, strong 
to work with, and, when such is our need, 
strong as the anchor which holds the ship 
through the storm. 



HOPE 213 

But how, more specifically, shall hopeful- 
ness be gained? is a question entitled to 
reply. It is so much a matter of tempera- 
ment, it may be said, that it is vain to 
expect men to have it. But not so. All 
have it, more or less. And it can be devel- 
oped by bringing before the mind those 
considerations which are fitted to encourage 
it, — and every situation has such, — and 
by keeping out of mind discontent, mood- 
iness, and the like. A thankful spirit will 
help hope. As we review past mercies, 
hope grows as naturally as a plant in the 
sunshine, — grows as a matter of course. 
David said rightly, " The Lord that deliv- 
ered me out of the paw of the lion, and 
out of the paw of the bear, he will deliver 
me out of the hand of this Philistine." The 
habit of enjoying good things as they come, 
daily blessings, innocent pleasures, however 
small, that are continually presenting them- 
selves, helps hope. Men suffer themselves 
to lose their interest in these ; in their fan- 
cied wisdom they allow nothing but " im- 
portant" things to occupy them, and so 
they become moody and hope wilts and 
withers. 



214 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

And once more I come to the point of 
unselfishness. The disappointment of self- 
ish hopes, or of those which while not 
grossly so are yet really so because leaving 
our fellow creatures or our Maker out of 
view, — this disappointment at length in- 
jures hopefulness itself. Men sink, against 
nature — note it ! — against nature, to the 
level of a feeble hope because so many of 
their hopes are unrealized, and this has 
been because so many of them were unrea- 
sonable, and this has been because so many 
of them have been really selfish. No refer- 
ence has been had to the Father of their 
spirits, their sympathizing Friend, and but 
little to the welfare of any but a handful 
of His children who are directly connected 
with themselves. They would " grasp in all 
the shore." Such hopes, then, fail, as they 
ought to fail ; and at last the fit penalty is 
paid. But let us avoid this — this sin against 
Nature (I repeat it); let us remember our 
Father God and our brother men, — in 
their case, let us live and let live, and then 
our many reasonable and realized anticipa- 
tions will make us increasingly hopeful as 
we go on. 



HOPE 215 

Or, should we be called to encounter 
some, and even severe, disappointments, as 
doubtless we shall be, for at best we are 
finite, we shall find that " tribulation work- 
eth patience, and patience, experience, and 
experience, hope," — a strange pedigree for 
hope, yet often proved a real one. Faith, in 
such a case, adopts the orphaned Hope and 
rears it, and Experience is in Faith's ser- 
vice. 

This subject, then, leads us where every 
great subject leads us when carefully exam- 
ined, — to God and His salvation. The 
Lord Christ, He it is who has converted 
hope into something profoundly real, who 
has made it more hopeful, and has also 
made it strong, enduring, and growing. He 
is the Good Samaritan that has found Hope 
in so many a case stripped, wounded, and 
half dead. The frequent theme of the poet, 
even poetry has sometimes joined in the 
assault upon it, as when one calls it " the 
assassin of our joy," and says that it " turns 
us o'er to death alone for ease." 

" Hope, eager hope, th' assassin of our joy, 
All present blessings treading under foot, 



2i6 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

Is scarce a milder tyrant than despair ; 
With no past toils content, still planning new, 
Hope turns us o'er to death alone for ease." 

And these words express the unconfessed 
sentiment of many, the sentiment which 
many in middle life and old age would be 
reluctant to avow, but which (so far as they 
think on the matter at all) they really hold 
or are half ready to adopt. It is Christ 
who has rescued this, as He has other 
things, from its sad case, and made it more 
glorious than it had ever claimed to be. 
If He checks the extravagances it easily 
assumes even in its recovery. He gives it 
a vigor and a reach before unknown. 

Be not His disciple, and all that we can 
say on higher themes is, after a point soon 
reached, mere sentiment. Separate hope 
from Him and it is but as the butterfly, or 
a day's ephemera, beautiful for a time, yet 
soon disappointing. But connect it with 
Him, and it is a strong angel, his wings (it 
may be) often folded, and he walking soberly 
by our side, but at last, as this world fades 
from sight, fully revealed and bearing us 
upward and onward forever. 



XV 

DUTY 

So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things 
which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants : 
we have done that which was our duty to do. — Luke xvii. lo. 

" We are unprofitable servants." It is one 
illustration of the amount of thought which, 
first and last, has been given to every say- 
ing of our Lord's — each grain of corn 
having been picked over, as it were — that 
some have found in this confession a mark 
of a quite imperfect state of character. 
That is, they tell us, we ought not to feel 
as servants but as friends of Jesus Christ, 
for He himself has said, " Henceforth I 
call you not servants, — but I have called 
you friends." Is it likely, say they, that He 
who thus spoke on another, though later, 
occasion would here bring forward in so 
strong a light the service rendered Him 
as one merely servile ? And again, they 
urge another passage in this same Gos- 
pel of Luke, " Blessed are those*^ servants 



2i8 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

whom the Lord when he cometh shall find 
watching; verily, I say unto you, that he 
shall gird himself, and make them sit down 
to meat, and will come forth and serve 
them." For a Christian to feel that he is a 
servant, they argue, is to have the defective 
spirit of the elder brother of the Prodigal 
Son, who said to his father (you remember), 
" Lo, these many years do I serve thee, 
neither transgressed I at any time thy com- 
mandment." 

Even though we regard this interpreta- 
tion as mistaken, some of its illustrations, 
historical and otherwise, are interesting and 
instructive. We find, for instance, that 
very great if not always safe church fa- 
ther, Origen, saying, " As long as one does 
only what he ought, that is, those things 
which are prescribed, he is an useless ser- 
vant," and he refers to this passage ; " but," 
he says, " if you add something to the pre- 
scribed things, then you will not be an use- 
less servant, but it shall be said to thee, 
' Well done, good and faithful servant,' " — 
in which Scripture, however, we note that 
the disciple is called a " servant," although 
a faithful one. Here, in Origen's v^ords, we 



DUTY 219 

see the very beginning of the Roman doc- 
trine of works of supererogation, though he 
thought not of such a thing, and that doc- 
trine was not developed for many a century 
afterward. The heathen Seneca, too, treats 
the question whether a slave can confer a 
favor on his master, and answers, "When 
his conduct passes into the feeling of 
friendship, it ceases to be called a service ; 
whatever exceeds the rule of servile duty 
and is rendered not from command but of 
free will, is a favor." This suggests that 
slavery with its usages very likely led Ori- 
gen and others to their interpretation. 

But it appears on examination that our 
Lord called His disciples, — even His apos- 
tles, — servants at about the same time 
that He styled them friends. " If any man 
serve me, let him follow me ; and where I 
am, there shall also my servant be," He said 
on the last public occasion recorded by St. 
John, and in the very same conversation in 
which He said, " Henceforth I call you not 
servants but friends ; " and at a later point 
in it (five verses later in the same chapter, 
the fifteenth), He goes as near to calling 
them servants as this : " Remember the 



220 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

word that I said unto you, The servant is 
not greater than his Lord." And even after 
the day of Pentecost, with all its revela- 
tions of their favored position, we find them 
praying, " And now, Lord, grant unto thy 
servants that with all boldness they may 
speak thy word." 

The truth is that the emphasis is on the 
word " unprofitable " in our text, and not 
at all on the word " servants," and that it 
describes the way in which we should re- 
gard ourselves,-that is, as having only done 
our duty when we have done our utmost, 
while some other passages tell how our 
Lord will graciously treat us. Paul puts 
the two things together when he says : 
" But now, being servants to God, ye have 
your fruit unto holiness and the end ever- 
lasting life. For the wages of sin " — that 
which it earns and deserves — " is death, 
but the gift of God" — "the gift of God" 
to his faithful " servants " — " is eternal life 
through Jesus Christ our Lord." We are 
both servants and friends, as we are also 
both servants and children, and we should 
deem ourselves so ; but in any capacity or 
relation, we should feel that at our best 



DUTY 221 

we have only done our duty, — that we 
have conferred no favor on our Lord : in 
a word that we are unprofitable, — not 
negligent or harmful, but unprofitable. We 
may have the spirit of friends or children 
to the full, and do all that such a spirit 
prompts, but then we have done only " that 
which was our duty to do." It is not said 
in our text or its context that God will 
treat us as servants ; we must not make the 
parable " run on all fours." It teaches but 
one lesson, and that concerns the way in 
which we are to regard ourselves, whether 
as servants or friends or children ; that is, 
as doing nothing that earns the grace of 
God. 

But now let us mark that if the text 
teaches humility it enjoins also the great 
lesson and fact of duty. I have spoken 
here at times of duty as privilege. I wish 
to speak this morning of duty done be- 
cause it is duty ; because we ought to do 
it ; because Infinite Righteousness and Im- 
personate Righteousness — that is, God — 
alike command it. No matter whether we 
feel it to be privilege or not, no matter 



222 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

whether we fail even to perceive it to be 
privilege, it is duty, and therefore it is to 
be done. The importance of this subject 
none can overestimate. I will first speak 
of it directly, and then contrast a sense of 
duty with certain other motives to action. 

Let us note more carefully what has just 
been affirmed. Duty has its claims as such 
— because it is duty. Once determine in 
any given case what we ought to do, and 
that should be enough for us. If, indeed, 
we can perceive and if we can feel it to be 
privilege, it is well, it is often helpful to 
our weakness ; though very often (be it ob- 
served) we shall neither feel nor perceive it 
to be privilege if we have not first some 
sense of its obligation. — Duty is the claim 
or law of right — which is an ultimate fact, 
except, indeed, as we lodge it in the very 
nature of God. Nothing, therefore, can be 
more authoritative, and nothing should 
have more power. The particular thing 
which we ought to do at any moment, might 
not be obligatory at another moment, or in 
other circumstances, or on the part of an- 
other — say younger — person; but this 
cannot disturb its sacred claim. It is then 



DUTY 223 

duty, we are living then, — our previous 
moments are over, our succeeding existence 
has not yet arrived ; then and there is our 
personality, and the whole majesty and 
authority and sacredness of righteousness 
confronts us. Duty, too, is the expression 
of the sublimest thing in us, — conscience. 
We are " wonderfully and even fearfully 
made ; " the understanding and imagina- 
tion, the sensitive nature and the will are, 
each and every one, objects of amazement 
to the thoughtful. But conscience has a 
place of its own. It is the shrine of our be- 
ing, the very holy of holies. Duty is the ut- 
terance of this sacred oracle. In its presence 
the father of modern philosophy, Imman- 
uel Kant, bowed his head and worshiped. 
" Two things," said he, " fill the spirit with 
always new and increasing wonder and rev- 
erence the more frequently and persist- 
ently meditation occupies itself with them : 
the starry heaven above me, and the moral 
law within me." And this conscience is 
the representative of Jehovah, the All-Per- 
fect Righteousness. When it speaks, either 
to bid us be and do what we deem binding 
upon us, or, being correctly informed, to 



224 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

tell US what that binding thing is, it is His 
word we hear, for the voice is the echo of 
His voice. 

How momentous, then, is a sense of 
duty ! If it does not rule us and habitually 
rule us, we are thoroughly disordered, — as 
much so as our world would be if the law 
of gravitation should be suspended even for 
an instant. 

We note, in the next place, how elevating 
and ennobling it must be — and is — to live 
under its power. It gives a new dignity to 
life, lifting us above the brutes, whom in 
our physical nature we more or less resem- 
ble. Our intellectual nature, indeed, might 
well avouch our vast distinction from them. 
But practically it will be found in very 
great degree that it does not, where con- 
science is not vigorous, — even if that same 
intellect is not employed to prove us one 
with the brute creation ! A sense of duty, 
on the other hand, gives elevation to life. 
It ennobles what would otherwise be often 
trifling and petty. It turns us, as one has 
said on another topic, from aimless school- 
boys, attracted by each butterfly, into pil- 
grims on the highroad to Immortality. " I 



DUTY 225 

must, because I ought." Well, as we live 
here below, the body greatly affects us and 
outward circumstances affect us greatly too, 
but with this rule of life, we have the signa- 
ture of Divinity upon us, we bear the image 
and superscription of the Infinite Caesar, 
we are clearly of His lineage therefore, and 
we look for and we are journeying toward 
a land where the body and all our environ- 
ment shall be themselves redeemed and 
" delivered from the bondage of corruption 
into the glorious liberty of the children of 
God." " Man that is in honor and under- 
standeth not, is like the beasts that perish ; " 
but it need not be so, for we may under- 
stand. We may understand that we are 
" made but a little lower than the angels," 
that neither animal appetite nor worldly de- 
sire is to be supreme, that we are not to 
yield to temptation even when the forbidden 
fruit seems not only " good for food " and 
" pleasant to the eyes," but " to be desired 
to make one wise," that we are to walk 
ever in the path of duty and obey God. 
Then will life be ennobled indeed. 

Still more, and, in a very common use of 
the word, yet more " practical," observe the 



226 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

value of a sense of duty as a safeguard 
from evil. We move amidst snares and pit- 
falls ; the world is full of them. But " he 
that walketh uprightly, walketh surely." No 
man will fall who lives in the sunlight of 
duty. I know that that which men call 
" duty " is sometimes but its image, that it 
is a cold thing, — a system or law, and not 
God, the living God, the author of law ; 
I know that that which men call " duty '" 
is sometimes but a magnifying of self, an 
exaggeration of one's own private con- 
science — as if the shrine, because it is the 
holy of holies, did not need the manifested 
glory of God dwelling in it. And so in 
either case — and both cases are commonly 
the same — such a sense of duty cannot be 
depended on. No, it is not enough to have 
the breastplate of righteousness only; we 
need the shield of faith over it, and the 
helmet of hope, too ; in a word, " the whole 
armor of God." To live " as ever in his 
great Taskmasters eye," as Milton has it 
— oh, this is not enough — no minister 
of truth can admit it to be enough ; it is 
" the Lord God " who is " a sun " as well 
as " a shield." And yet even a cold sense 



DUTY 227 

of duty is often a strong buckler against 
dishonesty and dishonor and unfaithfulness 
in little things as well as great. It will save 
one at critical moments — moments on 
which the whole of one's after-life is hing- 
ing, on which hang most precious interests 
of our fellow men. " I must not, because I 
ought not ! ' No, I must not, because I 
ought not," — this is an indispensable de- 
fense against moral evil, as " I must, because 
I ought " is an indispensable impulse and 
help to righteousness. This, though it is 
not just the armor prescribed in the Scrip- 
ture, will often protect a man better than 
the shield of faith, even, if he has not the 
breastplate behind that. 

This leads us, now, to the contrast be- 
tween a sense of duty and other motives to 
action. 

Consider the love of praise as one such. 
The praise of the good and wise is certainly 
helpful, but as a chief motive to conduct, 
it as certainly brings a snare ; for not far 
away from the desire of praise is the fear 
of dispraise, reproach, censure. Under that 
influence a man becomes a very coward, 



228 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

and then he will do strange things, and 
wicked things. Nor is the case greatly 
altered when it is even good men's favor 
that one lives for. They change ; they are 
affected by moods and circumstances and 
their own interests, in measure. It will not 
do to make their good or ill opinion our 
rule. To speak to please them, to suppress 
or qualify the truth as we see it for their 
sake, will be fatal to truthfulness ; to act 
to please them will be fatal to truthfulness 
of character. " Speaking the truth in love," 
— this is the rule of speech. " Watch ye, 
stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, 
be strong. Let all your things be done with 
charity," — this is the rule of conduct. Do- 
ing nothing needlessly to wound, glad to 
gratify .the very humblest when we may, 
striving ever to see, to speak, to live the 
truth, — in one word, dwelling in a sense 
of duty and of God, — this is our high call- 
ing. 

Contrast, too, a sense of duty as a motive 
to action with a desire for reward of any 
kind — praise or otherwise — and, I may 
say, reward whether earthly or heavenly, ex- 
cept as the heavenly recompense is rightly 



DUTY 229 

conceived as consisting mainly in perfected 
character, and therefore, largely, in a per- 
fected sense of duty itself. 

Very much of men's work is done for 
wages. Now, if no sense of duty is blended 
with one's work, if there is no spirit of fidel- 
ity, no feeling of obligation, how much is 
lost ! I may say first, meeting such on their 
own ground. They get the wages or reward, 
but no more, because under the government 
of God " two things cannot be bought 
with one price." Love is lost entirely, and 
respect mainly, and the full enjoyment of 
their toil. And this is lost — the cultivation 
of character; and if we do not cultivate 
character while at our work and by means 
of it, we shall do very little in that direction. 
How imperfectly, too, will work often be 
done that is done only for pay, so that, be- 
sides what is lost, positive injustice will be 
committed. No, let us rise higher than this. 
Let us get something out of our labor that 
is desirable and permanent. Let us grow 
better through our diligence. If work is 
performed, and lessons are learned, and 
whatever we have to do is done with our 
might, from a sense of duty in some good 



230 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

degree, life is rescued from drudgery and 
converted into a discipline for Heaven. 

Some persons, in order to escape the evils 
I have just pointed out, contrive to weave 
more or less sentiment and sensibility with 
their daily toil. This is well. Yet contrast, 
once more, a sense of duty as a motive to 
action, with this. Sentiment is variable, and 
often disappears altogether. Hard work, 
weariness, sickness, sleeplessness, often 
make havoc with it. We want something 
stronger and more durable, something for 
dull days as well as bright ones, something 
when the road goes uphill as well as when 
it goes downhill. Sensibility is something 
to be thankful for; it brightens life wonder- 
fully ; it redeems it often from mere drudg- 
ery. But all cannot have it — or much of it. 
And those that have, will find in conscience 
the help they need in many a trying hour. 
Let sentiment adorn duty, if it will, and 
hang flowers upon it, and even strengthen 
it when it can, turning its iron into steel, — 
yet be sure that duty is there. When emo- 
tion declines, when a spent nervous system 
or exhausting labors bear hardly upon us, 
then the " stern daughter of the voice of 



DUTY 231 

God " will lead us by the hand with her. 
And in time we may come to say, — 

*' Nor know we anything so fair 
As is the smile upon thy face." 

Let us, in the last place, contrast duty 
with expediency, as a motive. True, they 
are one very often, and duty is seldom at 
variance with what the clear eye sees to be 
truly expedient. Yet there is a world-wide 
difference between them as dominant mo- 
tives. We shall miss the really expedient 
if we make that our direct object of pur- 
suit, just as happiness is missed in the same 
way. The fugitive slave of former years 
found the Canada he longed for, with its 
safety and peace, by keeping the North Star 
in his eye ; he would have failed of it if he 
had followed each will o' the wisp with its 
deceptive promise. Do the right — that is 
the only sure way for ignorant mortals like 
us to do the expedient. 

But still otherwise, how superior, how 
unspeakably superior, the motive of duty ! 
Expediency is shifting ; it is here to-day and 
there to-morrow ; it means go northward 
now and southward then ; it requires one 



232 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

to take back now what he asserted a Httle 
while ago or to be silent when he had been 
eager and outspoken, to work away from a 
former position, to tack, to move on a curve. 
So it makes one's track sinuous, and thus 
useless to others ; the footprints we leave, 
if any, " upon the sands of time " can help 
no one else — a great misfortune, certainly. 
It is not adroit acts but straightforward 
ones, not clever speeches but strong ones, 
even if blunt, that men remember, and, if 
we are on the whole kind, remember grate- 
fully. And at length (by following expedi- 
ency) we ourselves are confused. We lose 
clearness of vision and often strength of 
purpose. For our own sake, fixed prin- 
ciples and stanch convictions, with char- 
ity and tolerance to others, — these are 
necessary for our own sake. They are ne- 
cessary to repose ; they are necessary to 
strength. " I can go forward," said that 
great man, Dr. Francis Wayland, " I can 
go forward, and I like to ; I can go back- 
ward, though I hate to ; but I can't go 
sideways." How helpful is such a man to 
others, and how strong in himself, — while 
expediency as a common motive to action 



DUTY 233 

will certainly lead to weakness, indecision, 
and failure. 



To live, indeed, under a sense of duty, 
truly, and in all its many requirements, de- 
mands faith. But that is open to us. " Lord, 
increase our faith," said the apostles, and 
the Lord answered their petition, as He so 
often does ours, by enjoining something 
which needed its exercise. Jesus said also, 
" If ye know how to give good gifts unto 
your children, how much more shall your 
heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to 
them that ask him ? " 

Let us not always desire the zephyrs from 
the south, delightful as they are in their 
season ; there is health and vigor and great 
joy in the stern north wind. And Job said, 
" Out of the south cometh the whirlwind ; 
but fair weather cometh out of the north." 



XVI 

CONVENTIONAL MORALITY 

Thou, God, seest me. — Gen. xvi. 13. 

These words were spoken by Hagar when 
the angel of the Lord found her in the 
wilderness. They express a thought com- 
forting or solemn, as the case may be, — 
comforting, we may suppose, in Hagar's 
case, though perhaps not altogether so, — 
solemn when we feel especially our respon- 
sibility to God. For my present purpose, I 
would put with them these words of a patri- 
arch. Job xxxiv. 21, " For his eyes are upon 
the ways of a man, and he seeth all his 
goings." ^ 

The Bible tells us repeatedly and in many 
forms of our direct, personal responsibility 
to God. I wish to speak to-day of a sense 
of this responsibiHty as a prop of morality, 
with some especial reference to honesty. 
Every once in a while, men are astounded 
by the discovery of great frauds in high 



CONVENTIONAL MORALITY 235 

business circles. And very frequently, in 
this age of commercial activity, do we hear 
of aggravated cases of dishonesty. Why is 
it that men are thus fearfully carried away 
by temptation ? 

A chief way in which forgetfulness of 
God operates, is this : Custom is adopted 
as law instead of righteousness. All trades 
and occupations have their usages, and very 
properly so. Some of them are apt to be 
purely traditional ; that is, the reason for 
their adoption has ceased, and yet, and not 
wrongfully, they are handed down from 
one generation to another. Others have 
an intrinsic propriety. But the fact of such 
usages is the point before us now. In 
nearly all the relations of life, also, custom 
has a very prominent and important place. 

Now, as a consequence, there is apt to 
grow up over our heads a vine of conven- 
tionaHsm shutting out the light of God's 
law. Right things are often done simply 
because they are customary; and wrong 
things are often done for the same reason. 
A merchant may draw back from certain 
unmercantile and wrong practices because 
they are unmercantile, while the same man 



236 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

may commit what is equally wrong, and to 
others as clearly wrong, but yet tolerated 
by the usages of his business. And it is 
astonishing how thick such a vine will 
grow. Under it men will be guilty of acts 
and practices from which they would utterly 
shrink in other relations. They will talk 
and do according to a standard of morals 
which not for an instant would they toler- 
ate anywhere else. They will make state- 
ments and equivocations for the like of 
which they would punish a child severely, 
and which they themselves would not be 
guilty of except under the dark shadow of 
this vine of custom. Under this how^ often 
does the soldier live, and thus, at the sum- 
mons of his superior, he, so commonly gen- 
tle, generous, forbearing, the defender of the 
weak, hastens to destroy the weak, amidst 
scenes of cruelty and blood. 

Under this cover of conventionality, the 
greatest crimes may be committed, and no 
one will acknowledge the responsibility. 
Intoxicating drinks will be carried abroad 
to ruin the pagan body and soul, and the 
owner of the ship will lay the blame upon 
his agent, — he himself knew nothing of 



CONVENTIONAL MORALITY 237 

the nature of the cargo; he left that mat- 
ter, Hke other owners, to the agent. The 
agent will urge that he was instructed, vir- 
tually at least, to let the ship on the most 
profitable terms, and that, like other agents, 
he could do no otherwise. In the same way 
will the leasing of houses for the vilest pur- 
poses be excused. 

So completely may the light of God's 
word be shut out by the prescriptions of 
usage. A striking illustration is furnished 
by a letter of the infamous Duke of Alva 
to his king, Philip the Second of Spain. 
A monarch's promises, he said, "were 
not to be considered so sacred as those of 
humbler mortals. Not that the king should 
directly violate his word, but at the same 
time," continued the Duke, " I have thought, 
all my life, and I have learned it from the 
Emperor, your Majesty's father," — that 
Charles the Fifth, who regretted in his last 
years that he had not violated the safe-con- 
duct he had given to Luther and dealt with 
him as a predecessor had dealt with John 
Huss, — " that the negotiations of kings de- 
pend upon different principles from those 
of us private gentlemen who walk the world." 



238 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

The light of God's law once excluded 
from our way, it is not strange that men 
fall into sins which shock every one and 
which usage does not tolerate. If they do 
that which is wrong because it is usual, we 
may expect that they will, before long, do 
that which is unusual, but no worse in itself. 
And thence they may pass on to greater 
crimes. The occasion, you observe, is the 
substitution of custom or usage as an au- 
thority for the law of God. Hence that 
comes to be forgotten as a rule of life ; and 
when some sudden or great temptation oc- 
curs, its mighty power is not present to 
shield the soul. 

Now, let the great truth expressed in 
the text, " Thou, God, seest me," be written 
upon our hearts, and we are safe. " Thou, 
God, seest me;" I am responsible to Thee; 
nothing can absolve me from direct alle- 
giance to Thee, — this is the knife that cuts 
through the vine of custom, and lets in the 
light of Heaven's authority, a sense of 
direct, personal responsibility to God. 

The first and great question, then, with 
regard to every usage and every act is clearly 
this : Is it right in the sight of God ? 



CONVENTIONAL MORALITY 239 

But here we often meet with an objection. 
We are told that this course is impracticable 
— that no man could get on in business on 
this principle, or, for that matter, in any- 
thing else. It is urged that, whatever may 
be the case ages hence, when Christianity 
shall have obtained complete dominion in 
the world, we cannot now move freely in 
trade, in politics, in the various walks of 
life, and fully carry out the principle just 
laid down. And so we are tempted, as Jesus 
was, to turn stones into loaves. But let us 
note that this assertion remains to be 
proved. It is doubtless very inconvenient, 
and sometimes it is extremely difficult, to 
act on the strict requirements of righteous- 
ness in all situations. This is a part of our 
trial, what is often called our "probation." 
But it is not at all clear that this difficulty 
amounts to an impossibility. Of course I 
except those situations in which one has no 
right to be. There are employments, for 
example, which are essentially wrong, and 
which of necessity, therefore, involve wrong 
acts and methods. But with such exceptions 
as these, we may feel assured that in all posi- 
tions it is possible and practicable for us to 



240 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

do right; there are certainly many right- 
eous men busy in the world. The contrary, 
surely, is to be proved. 

But waiving this, I reply that success or 
the want of it cannot affect moral princi- 
ples. In deciding what is merely prudent, 
considerations of that kind are admissible. 
Often, too, in deciding what is right, in our 
ignorance we must look at the probable re- 
sults of the courses of conduct before us. 
But that what is right is to be done — what- 
ever it may be, or wherever it may lead — 
is a point far above prudential considera- 
tions. What father would like to have the 
preacher teach his children the opposite ? 
Righteousness our rule, — this is the plain 
teaching of Holy Writ. "Whether it be 
right in the sight of God to hearken unto 
you more than unto God, judge ye," said 
Peter and John to the Jewish rulers, and 
all admit the fitness of their position. 
" Whether it be right in the sight of God" — 
they took for granted that what was right 
was to be done ; that, they assumed as a 
matter about which there could be no dis- 
pute. And this is in accordance with the 
spirit of the whole Bible, — and with the pro- 



CONVENTIONAL MORALITY 241 

foundest convictions of conscience. (Of 
course this does not mean contempt for 
others' conscience, judgment, or feelings. 
Our own conscience forbids, certainly ought 
to forbid, such a thing.) Still farther, the 
example alike of prophets and of apostles 
and of worthies in every age shows that 
righteousness is higher than merely earthly 
claims. The eleventh chapter of Hebrews 
sums up the story when it tells of those of 
the earlier time who. in the path of duty, 
"had trial of cruel mockings and scourg- 
ings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprison- 
ment : They were stoned, they were sawn 
asunder, were tempted, were slain with the 
sword : they wandered about in sheepskins 
and goatskins ; being destitute, afHicted, 
tormented ; . . . they wandered in deserts, 
and in mountains, and in dens and caves 
of the earth." All this is as true of later 
heroes. A " crown of righteousness " was 
their aim. 

And the Bible does not promise entire 
exemption from trouble for righteousness' 
sake, but rather, it warns us to expect any- 
thing but that. Assuredly success in the 
worldly sense of the word is not promised 



242 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

to the righteous man. He is told to look 
for his riches and his honors in other 
directions. His consolation and encour- 
agement here are not that he is what the 
world calls prosperous, — that he is a little 
richer or more famous than his fellow men, 
but that he has the approval of a good con- 
science, the favor of his Heavenly Father, 
and the hope of an eternal inheritance in 
heaven. This we all know. 

Is it right ? Has it God's approval ? — 
this, then, is to be the first question in re- 
gard to every usage and act. 

But another objection is often urged, not 
so much to the general principle as to the 
practical application of it, and urged Some- 
times with much plausible adroitness. We 
are told that a course of strict righteous- 
ness will destroy our influence for good. 
The objection clothes itself in the garb of 
virtue. 

This, as I have said, is not so much a 
theoretical as a practical objection. The 
duty of doing what is right in the sight 
of God is not directly denied. But in the 
moment of severe temptation, it may be, 



CONVENTIONAL MORALITY 243 

when a man has all that he can do to stand 
erect, the thought is broached that a rigid 
observance of the principle may endanger 
that which is dear to God as well as to 
himself, — his influence for good, — and 
that a slight deviation from the straight 
line will add to his usefulness. Let a little 
" miry clay " be mixed with the iron, is the 
suggestion. 

This objection may be met in the same 
way as the other. It is by no means sure 
that a good cause is promoted by a con- 
formity, however slight, to a sinful usage 
or principle. It cannot be proved. We are 
not to judge by immediate results; we 
are not to judge from apparent results. By 
yielding, good men have often had to ad- 
mit to themselves afterward what Luther 
frankly confessed on such an occasion, — 
"We have played the fool exceedingly." 
This is certain, — that exceedingly often 
a man's power for good is fatally injured 
by swerving from the right. The charm 
that hung about him is gone ; the secret 
of his power is lost. Some present object 
of apparent value may be gained, but this 
is all. For as the German proverb has it, 



244 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

" One must needs have a long spoon who 
sups with the devil." 

Besides, we are to leave all this matter 
of influence with God. He bids us do 
right. We may safely commit results to 
Him. Very likely the right will not always 
seem to be wise also. But for this very 
reason He bids us carry over the " breast- 
plate of righteousness" the "shield of 
faith." We are to trust Him. We should 
not need that shield if all were plain before 
us. We may be sure that a single eye, a 
pure life, the courage that is born of con- 
victions, and faith in God, will give us all 
the influence we ought to have. For us it 
is enough if what we do is right. " Thou, 
God, seest me ; " let my conduct be holy in 
Thy sight, — this thought marks out the 
way of duty. 

Let us carefully note, also, that this 
thought indicates a way of usefulness. 

One chief thing to be done in leading 
this world to God is to imbue its institu- 
tions, customs, maxims, modes of thought, 
with a right spirit. To a great extent these 
are stamped with ungodliness, and there- 



CONVENTIONAL MORALITY 245 

fore they draw men or tend to draw them 
away towards wrong. Many of them have 
come down from early and bad times ; and 
most of them, whenever they began, are 
not yet pervaded by the Gospel — have not 
yet been stricken through with its princi- 
ples and spirit. 

Now one way of usefulness for good men 
is to put, as far as in them lies, a right 
impress upon these things. Let right cus- 
toms be substituted for wrong. Into every 
relation let the temper of Christianity enter. 
Let all the usages of college, for example, 
be right. Let right influences be created 
on every side. The good that would be 
done thus we cannot estimate. None can 
measure the happy influence that may be 
exerted by a single honorable and Chris- 
tian custom. It awakens thought. It con- 
vinces men of the reality of true religion, 
and makes them feel its power. And if we 
could have the Divine law reflected from 
every side, from every usage, from every 
institution, from every arrangement, so that 
men would walk in a focus of Divine light 
and heat, the benefits would be great in- 
deed. 



246 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

A chief means of usefulness for virtuous 
men in this respect is to set an example of 
single-minded fidelity to righteousness. A 
most effective mode of preaching the Gos- 
pel is to live in all things with a simple 
reference to what is right in the sight of 
God. We all know the value of a holy life 
in its influence upon others. But I am 
speaking now of something more specific 
than this general truth. I am speaking of 
the good that may be done by living on 
the principle of a recognition of our direct, 
personal responsibility to God. For exam- 
ple, we urge upon our friends the impor- 
tance of faith. We tell them that spiritual 
things are the great concern, far above 
earthly affairs. Now let us show by our 
lives how fully we believe this. Let us not 
walk by sight, do wrong, warp our princi- 
ples for the sake of prosperity or comfort, 
and so contradict our testimony. Do we 
call upon men to have faith ? And what is 
faith ? Not the reception of certain truths 
only, but of the whole word and will of 
God. To believe in the mystery of a triune 
Deity may require less faith than to believe 
that " whether we eat, or drink, or whatso- 



CONVENTIONAL MORALITY 247 

ever we do, we are to do all to the glory 
of God." Let us live faith, and we shall 
give the most convincing and effective 
proof of our estimate of it. 

We tell men that faith is a practical 
principle, the really practical principle, and 
the only one to be relied on permanently. 
We have daily opportunity to show this. 
Let us prove the power of faith to lift us 
above the entanglements of sinful custom. 
Does faith work } No better proof can be 
given than is furnished by living ever in 
our Father's eye. The belief that there is a 
God may give no evidence of the blessed 
power of faith. " The devils also believe, 
and tremble." But let a man's life show 
that he believes that there is a God in the 
full meaning of that fact, let him live as if 
there were indeed one who lays His hand 
upon all our doings and bids us in all 
things have a reference to His gracious 
will, and the demonstration that there is 
power in faith is complete. 

Here, then, is a way of usefulness as well 
as duty. It is what we especially want in a 
skeptical age, — the example of men living 
under the power of the thought, " God's 



248 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

eyes are upon the ways of a man, and He 
seeth all his goings." Every such life is a 
fact, — something addressed, therefore, to 
that part of our mental nature whose one- 
sided culture in our day breeds so many 
small, shallow doubts, — a fact which can- 
not be gainsaid ; a fact which goes to show 
the reality of true religion. 

And the thought suggested by the text 
would brace our virtue and improve our 
whole character. We have the testimony 
of " the best of great men and the greatest 
of good men " that in the vast multitude of 
cases something of this kind is necessary 
in order to sustain virtue. In his " Fare- 
well Address," the Father of our country 
says : " Let us with caution indulge the 
supposition that morality can be main- 
tained without religion. Whatever may be 
conceded to the influence of refined edu- 
cation on minds of peculiar structure, rea- 
son and experience both forbid us to expect 
that national morality can prevail in exclu- 
sion of religious principles." 

A recognition of a Supreme Ruler, of 
His constant oversight and our personal 



CONVENTIONAL MORALITY 249 

responsibility to Him, will make it easier 
for the young man to walk with steady 
step in the ways of honor. It will make it 
easier for every one. And it would im- 
prove our entire character. Our prime fault 
is our forgetfulness and neglect of our Fa- 
ther in heaven. Our prime need is His 
enthronement in our being. It would be a 
long step towards this if we should bring 
ourselves under the habitual power of Ha- 
gar's confession, " Thou, God, seest me." 
If in all our plans and hopes, in the adop- 
tion of our standards and the indulgence of 
our desires, we kept this thought, much 
would be done to fulfill the petition, — at 
least in our own hearts, — " Thy kingdom 



come." 



As we close, let us listen to the seer who 
said to the Jewish king, " The eyes of the 
Lord run to and fro throughout the whole 
earth, to show himself strong in the be- 
half of those whose heart is perfect toward 
him ! " 



XVII 

MEN HAVE WHAT THEY LIVE FOR 

Verily, I say unto you, They have their reward. — Matt. 
vi. 2, 1. c. (Compare verses 5 and 16 and the Revised Version.) 

Hypocrites, says Jesus, give alms, pray, 
fast, " that they may have glory of men." 
And they have their reward — the reward 
they desire, and it is all they will ever have. 
That other recompense, " at the resurrec- 
tion of the just," the " reward with our 
Father in heaven," they must not look for. 
They have received their reward. 

It is a general rule of God's government 
of the world that men get what they live for. 
God does not distribute the so-called good 
things of this world according to character. 
This has been recognized in all ages ; and 
the Bible declares it. Plainly, it is not the 
fact that character is the standard accord- 
ing to which they are, even generally, be- 
stowed. Nor does He dispense them ac- 



MEN HAVE WHAT THEY LIVE FOR 251 

cording to bare sovereignty. He gives as 
He will, but not willfully. His is a sover- 
eignty of wisdom, holiness, and benevolence, 
even as our Lord illustrates it in the case 
of the householder who replied to his com- 
plaining workman, " Is it not lawful for 
me to do what I will with mine own ? Is 
thine eye evil, because I am good ? " — in 
other words, " I will do good with my 
own." Nor does this benevolent, holy, wise 
sovereignty distribute its blessings here 
merely for high ends of discipline or instruc- 
tion or moral government in general. It 
has such ends, no doubt. But one of the 
means by which it accomplishes them is 
through the workings of the rule here an- 
nounced. " Men have their reward." 

Let us consider the principle in question ; 
as a general rule, men get what they live 
for. We are to distinguish, of course, be- 
tween seeming to live for an object and 
really living for it. To wish for an object 
is not necessarily to choose it. One may 
desire wealth, but he may prefer that ease 
from which wealth can seldom be won. He 
may desire popular applause, but he may 



252 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

prefer obscurity to arduous toil and the lia- 
bility of failure. We choose an object when 
we prefer it to everything that comes in 
competition with it. When, for the sake 
of riches, we are willing to expend all the 
labor and take all the pains and make all 
the sacrifices that the acquisition of riches 
would require in our case, then we truly 
choose riches. Now, as this example sug- 
gests, all but invariably there are certain 
things to be done in order to gain the 
objects we prefer. Except with His com- 
mon gifts, such as air and sunshine, God 
seldom, comparatively, bestows His boun- 
ties irrespective of these things. Even His 
common gifts very often need exertion to 
secure their benefits when we most need 
them, — to have the sunshine in our dwell- 
ings, for instance, or pure, fresh air even 
outdoors. With other than common bless- 
ings, seldom, I repeat, does God give them 
without effort on our part. And often it is 
not so when it seems so; there is a real 
connection between man's effort and God's 
bounty. If we would learn, we must ob- 
serve, meditate, study. Practical wisdom is 
gained by experience and thought. Virtue 



MEN HAVE WHAT THEY LIVE FOR 253 

comes from self-denial and watchfulness. 
With every object, accordingly, that we de- 
sire, something, as a general rule, comes 
into competition. With knowledge, for ex- 
ample, it may be indolence, or the love of 
money or of pleasure. Philip of Macedon 
had his choice between conquest and ease. 
Demosthenes had his between the achieve- 
ments of eloquence and statesmanship and 
the safety and pleasure of retirement. The 
Apostle Paul had his between the extension 
of his Lord's kingdom, obedience to God, 
eternal bliss, on the one hand, and the 
favor of his countrymen, a quiet life, and a 
peaceful death, on the other. To choose 
an object, then (I say again), is to prefer it 

— not, of necessity, to anything else, but 

— to anything which comes in competition 
with it. Philip or Alexander chose con- 
quest not because he merely wished for 
more territory or for achievement, but be- 
cause he wished for either or both more 
than he wished for ease, domestic enjoy- 
ment, all things that came in comparison 
with them. 

And as we distinguish between what we 
desire and what we choose, so are we to 



254 CHRISTIAX PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

distinsfuish between what we seem to choose 
and what we really choose. One may take 
several steps toward an object, but fail to 
go to it, — not only this, he may keep in 
the road and seem to take all the steps to an 
object, and yet his attention may be fixed 
elsewhere. It is flowers by the way that he 
is plucking and for which he cares, and not 
a journey that he is accomplishing. Two 
men may read the same book in a very 
different manner ; one, carelessly, to while 
away the time, the other for mental disci- 
pline ; yet they may seem to a friend equally 
eno-asfed. And in the case of so grreat a 
thing as Life, a man may fail to know what 
he is really li\ing for unless he takes pains 
to know. Making the distinction in ques- 
tion, then, between the seeming and the 
realit}' of the case, men get what they live 
for, as a general rule ; " they have their 
reward." 

In this statement I have no reference 
either to specific points which men may 
choose — such as the acquisition of just 
so much wealth or of just such a position, 
or to the innumerable objects of transient 



J^£EN HAVE WHAT THEY LIVE FOR 255 

desire and endeavor wliich occupy us as we 
pass through the world. I do not refer to 
specific points of desire, which, in an im- 
portant sense, often cannot be objects of 
choice because there is nothing to be done, 
that being done, would create a probability 
in favor of one s success ; the thing is not 
an object of choice much more, if any more, 
than flying is — though one might greatly 
wish both. I do not refer to the innumer- 
able objects of transient endeavor, although 
even with them the proposition may be 
verified more fully than might be sup- 
posed. But I am speaking now of objects 
whose pursuit gives shape either to one's 
whole life or to a veTj considerable length 
of it — that is, to the objects one may be 
said to live for. These are such as know- 
ledge, riches, power, usefulness, righteous- 
ness. Of these I affirm that the man who 
lives for them generally gets them. 

For the proof of this I cite common ex- 
perience and observation. This proof, per- 
haps, cannot be better unfolded than by 
nieetino^ at once the objection that most 
readilv suo-orests itself, — Do not thousands 
fail in the pursuit of wealth, power, popu- 



256 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

lar applause ? Is not such failure, indeed, 
notorious ? And are not those who win the 
prizes the exception instead of the rule? 
I reply, The large majority of failures are due 
to the fact that the men in question do not 
choose — do not live for — the object which 
they profess or seem to pursue. They may 
deceive themselves, or, with no intention to 
do so, they may deceive others. Here is 
one who would be rich, and who desires 
wealth so much that he would even be 
guilty of fraud to get it. But he wishes 
also, and wishes more, to spend as he goes 
— to enjoy as far as his means will allow 
him, day by day. He is not willing to deny 
himself the pleasure thus to be had during 
the long years requisite for the accumu- 
lation of a fortune. He would like wealth 
when he thinks on the subject, or when 
obliged to deny himself some costly pleasure 
for the want of it ; but he likes better the 
daily enjoyment of what he daily earns. 
Money, like everything else, has its price, 
and he is unwilling to pay it. But one who 
really chooses to be rich will be, generally. 
Let his income be small, it will not be so 
small that he cannot take the ftrst step 



MEN HAVE WHAT THEY LIVE FOR 257 

to wealth, saving. So as to power. I have 
already excepted specific points from the 
scope of my proposition. One may eas- 
ily fail to get certain positions, however 
much he may desire them and even though 
he may seem to live for them. If men can 
be said (as they cannot), in any but a very 
qualified sense, to have lived for the presi- 
dency of the United States, for example, 
yet there was not enough for them to do 
that could create a probability of success. 
Hence, they could not choose to be presi- 
dent, much more than they could choose to 
fly; the thing was not an object of choice. 
But power in general — high place of some 
kind — such men attain. If they do not, 
almost invariably the reason is that they 
really prefer something else that comes in 
competition with it ; they turn aside to lit- 
erature, or to law, or to money-making, or 
to ease, — nay, too often to strong drink. 
Well on their way, it may be, to posts of 
honor, they relax their habits of industry, 
or they use what they have already gained 
to promote by-ends. They take the oppor- 
tunity to fill their purse, to lay up, as they 
would say, for a rainy day. Their eyes are 



258 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

no longer fastened on the goal, but have 
begun to fix on some other object by the 
way. How many, as I have intimated, have 
yielded to the temptations of the cup ! 

Of course, to the proposition we are con- 
sidering, — that men have what they live 
for, — there are many exceptions, — many, 
at least, that seem so to our imperfect know- 
ledge of the facts. " The race," says Scrip- 
ture, — " the race is not to the swift, nor 
the battle to the strong," that is, it does not 
belong to them, they cannot call it their 
own, they are not sure of it, therefore ; yet 
the swiftest almost always win the race, 
and the strongest almost always gain the 
battle. And when the swiftest lose the race, 
it is because for the time they cease to be 
swift ; when the strongest lose the battle, it 
is because for the time they fail to be strong. 
No doubt, too, there are many cases in 
which those who do not live for this or that 
object, get it ; wealth comes by inheritance, 
power sometimes seeks out him that would 
shrink from it. Yet exceptional instances 
in either direction do not affect the general 
rule. 

The truth seems to be that through it 



MEN HAVE WHAT THEY LIVE FOR 259 

God is teaching us a great moral lesson, or 
more than one such lesson. He is incul- 
cating the value of energy, diligence, care, 
watchfulness, perseverance, conformity to 
great laws. And thereby He is aiming to 
form in us habits of momentous and endur- 
ing consequence to our spiritual welfare. 
Here in part, perhaps, is the explanation of 
the Proverbs of Solomon (or rather of their 
place in the Scriptures), even in those in- 
stances where they seem to have reference 
to merely prudential excellences — such as 
industry and forethought; they teach us 
how to live in lesser things here, they train 
us to live for the things that are not seen. 
However this may be, the principle or fact 
in question remains, — men get what they 
live for. Its illustrations are innumerable. 
In his autobiography Goethe takes as his 
motto, " What man wishes in youth, he 
has in fullness in old age ; " and he says, 
" Our wishes are presentiments of the fac- 
ulties which lie within us, and harbingers 
of that which we shall be in a condition 
to perform." The student of law — or the 
lawyer — devoting all possible opportuni- 
ties to literature, will be a " literary man " 



26o CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

in time, and turning aside really, if not 
formally, from his profession, will give him- 
self mainly to letters. The physician whose 
thoughts turn continually to art will, al- 
most in spite of himself, become, in effect, 
an artist. The college student whose heart 
is really absorbed in music or in athletics 
will commonly find in that his life work. 
Tell us what one's by-work is (if it be truly 
hy-work and not by-play), — to what his 
thoughts certainly and lovingly turn as 
soon as his appointed task is over, and from 
that we can better judge what his future life 
will be, at least ultimately be, than from the 
task-work which he seems to have set him- 
self. 

Some things very plainly follow from this 
line of thought. And first, there is much 
less mystery in some parts of the Divine 
government than many think. We our- 
selves, it has been justly said, are not apt to 
suspect mystery when we are prospered ; 
it is in adversity that we cry out, " How 
unsearchable are His judgments ! " Many 
a man fails of success in his undertakings 
because he is not really in earnest. Gladly 



MEN HAVE WHAT THEY LIVE FOR 261 

would he succeed in them, but there is 
something he Hkes better. Diligently, per- 
haps, does he labor in them, but as soon as 
the hours of work are over, his thoughts 
are elsewhere — where his heart has been 
all the time. Conscientiously, even, does 
he engage in them, but his affections are 
given to some other object. I am not now 
saying that he is blameworthy for this; I am 
only speaking of facts. The good man 
who wonders at his failure (I mean in 
worldly affairs) quite commonly has not 
tried to get the thing he seemed — to him- 
self, perhaps, — to be aiming to get. He 
may have got something better, — domestic 
enjoyment, culture of the mind, usefulness ; 
his course may have been the truly wise 
one. But his failure is not to be referred 
to the inscrutable providence of God. In- 
scrutable things, no doubt, there are in that 
providence. The best laid and the best 
executed plans may be unavailing. A life- 
time of toil, for moderate ends, may profit 
naught. God is sovereign ; and though 
His sovereignty is one of infinite wisdom 
and goodness, yet for that very reason He 
may foil us — even in the pursuit of good 



262 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

ends, having something better in store for 
us or for others. Yet it remains true that 
generally " the race is to the swift, the bat- 
tle to the strong, bread to the wise " or pru- 
dent, " riches to the discerning, and favor " 

— popular applause — "to men of skill." 
Not through extraordinary opportunities, 
but through the right use of ordinary op- 
portunities lies the road to success. And 
this is the fact, or law, which God's sover- 
eignty is upholding and showing itself in, 

— showing and vindicating itself in this 
more fully than in those unusual cases 
where all recognize it. Strange as it may 
seem, it often requires more faith to receive 
this truth than the other. 

Once more : we are " not to expect to 
buy two things for one price." " Everything 
in this world," it has been well said, " has 
its price ; and the price buys that, not some- 
thing else." Thus, " the soldier pays his 
price for his glory, — risk of life and limb ; " 
the statesman pays his price, — " the price 
of a thorny pillow, unrest, the chance of 
being to-day a nation's idol, to-morrow 
the people's execration." Now men, as this 
author says, are constantly expecting to buy 



MEN HAVE WHAT THEY LIVE FOR 263 

two things with one price; they live "for 
earth and expect to win spiritual blessings, 
or they live to the spirit and then wonder 
that they have not the good things of earth." 
The honest man, for example, wonders why 
his dishonest competitor is more prospered 
than he ; and good men often seem to ex- 
pect that hereafter they will have for re- 
compense substantially the same kind of 
enjoyment that some bad men are having 
here. 

But this is alike unreasonable in itself 
and inconsistent with God's government of 
the world. It is unreasonable in itself, for 
it is evident that one price should buy 
one thing. Fidelity, integrity, truthfulness, 
are fitted to win a quiet conscience, — not 
houses and lands and bonds. Industry, cau- 
tion, economy, and kindred qualities stand 
and fitly stand in relation to these ; and the 
upright man, who has those qualities, may 
gain these things ; but it is not reasonable 
that he should expect to get them unless 
he has the qualities which stand in relation 
to them. It is most reasonable, no doubt, 
that a truly good man should have God's 
favor, and that he should expect God to 



264 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

manifest that favor in some way — as (shall 
I say?) by discipline! (Hebrews xii. 7) ; but 
not that he should expect Him to manifest 
it in this way, — by giving two things for 
one price, that is, by giving not only spirit- 
ual blessings to his piety, but also temporal 
blessings — which temporal blessings are 
connected with another class of qualities. 

And such is not God's way, in fact. A 
man's integrity, indeed, may indirectly help 
him to worldly prosperity ; but it is not to 
be counted on in that direction, to a very 
great degree. The loftiest honesty may 
help to a livelihood, but seldom to wealth. 
Speak the truth and live the truth always, 
and it will perhaps hinder as much as it 
will aid merely earthly success. " The truly 
righteous just man," said one of Plato's 
characters long ago, " will be scourged, tor- 
tured, fettered, have his eyes burnt out, and 
lastly suffer all manner of evils and be 
crucified." And when the Embodiment of 
perfect righteousness walked our earth, He 
verified the declaration. God's way is to 
give the best gifts to the best qualities. 

On the other hand, there is a large class 
of men who live essentially for this world 



MEN HAVE WHAT THEY LIVE FOR 265 

and yet are surprised if one denies their 
claim to the highest blessings. They are 
good neighbors, good citizens, temperate, 
honest in their dealings ; they have those 
traits that fit them to live well here if there 
is no God and no eternal future. They, 
however, wish not merely the appropri- 
ate rewards of such traits as theirs, but 
those also that are promised to men who 
" walk with God " through the world, and 
whose good neighborhood, good citizen- 
ship, temperance, honesty, and the rest are 
irradiated by a reference to His will. But 
in vain ; " they have their reward," and 
have it here — all of it. It is all that they 
can rightly look for. 

It only remains for me, my friends, to 
start the question, — What do you really 
wish ? — that is, what do you choose ? what 
do you live for.? If any earthly thing, you 
can (probably) have it by living for it. But 
do not complain if you get that only. If 
ambition is for you the rival with useful- 
ness, and you choose the objects of ambi- 
tion, do not be surprised if you have not 
the joys of benevolence. If pleasure, ease, 



266 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

self-indulgence are for you the rivals with 
Christ-like character, do not be surprised 
if, in choosing those, you lose this. If to 
you, young men, who have to select a pro- 
fession for life, self-aggrandizement is the 
successful competitor with the service of 
your Master above, be not astonished that 
you reap the corresponding fruits. 

What, then, I ask again, my friends, are 
you living for ? — consciously or uncon- 
sciously — with set purpose or with no pur- 
pose ? What is the drift of your life ? 
Choose the highest object, choose Christ 
and His kingdom, and adversity may be 
yours, or prosperity may be yours ; but 
there can be no failure in this. With lower 
objects, we must say that generally a man 
gets what he lives for three times out of 
four, nine times out of ten, it may be. But 
with this he is always successful. Choose 
it, choose Him, and you may have earthly 
sorrow or earthly joy — probably you will 
have something of both — but certainly, 
certainly, certainly, you will "be recom- 
pensed at the resurrection of the just." 



XVIII 

CLOUDS AND RAIN 

If the clouds be full of rain, they empty themselves upon the 
earth : and if the tree fall toward the south, or toward the 
north, in the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be. — 
ECCL. xi. 3. 

That is, when the clouds are once filled 
with rain, as a matter of course — inevi- 
tably — they empty themselves, and when 
the tree has once fallen, it remains as it 
fell — it does not itself change its posi- 
tion for another. The truth taught us here 
is the inevitableness of events as follow- 
ing causes. " The logic of events," as the 
thought has been well put, is, according 
to this passage, a reality. Let things go in 
a certain manner, and the issue is sure. 
The tree may fall toward the north, or 
it may fall toward the south; but once 
fallen, it stays as it fell. This general 
thought may properly detain us a few mo- 
ments, and then I shall ask your attention 
to a specific application of it. 



268 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

It is, then, an exceedingly important 
principle, and one which intelligent men 
especially cannot innocently disregard, that 
causes, that is, things potent enough to 
become such, produce their results with 
certainty. Let the causes remain, and the 
results must come. There is no way to 
prevent it ; when the clouds are full, they 
will discharge themselves. No regrets, no 
efforts of well-meaning men, no prayers of 
God's people, will avert it. In nations, 
families, individuals, the principle is found 
true. 

A fearful illustration of this, our own 
country furnished in 1861 and onwards. 
Later the King of Naples was warned that 
he was taking a course which would lead 
to his dethronement. He persisted in the 
coarsest despotism. For a time he seemed 
safe. He defied with impunity the moral 
sentiment of all Western Europe. But the 
clouds were full at last ; and being full, 
" they emptied themselves upon the earth." 
In families, how often do we see children 
grow up unrestrained ! The idea of author- 
ity is not inculcated, practically inculcated. 
It is hoped — so far as thought is given to 



CLOUDS AND RAIN 269 

the subject — it is hoped, perhaps, that in- 
fluences of a general character, that increas- 
ing years with their mental development, 
that some unknown cause, will tame the 
violent temper. In vain ; the clouds fill, 
and once full they empty themselves. We 
are constantly liable to delusion in this 
thing. Somehow or other, we expect that 
causes will not work out results in our 
own case. We violate the laws of health, 
and are surprised when health fails. We 
violate the great principles of business, of 
political economy, or otherwise, and virtu- 
ally reckon on a suspension of the laws we 
break. All around us, no doubt, a little 
observation would supply abundant illus- 
trations of this. Any physician could give 
us instance after instance. 

One thing that helps to deceive us on 
this point is that other causes sometimes 
concur to modify the workings of those 
which we observe, so that the anticipated 
result does not always come, or does not 
come just as we expect it, or does not come 
as soon as we expect it. Such a person, we 
say, is breaking certain natural laws and 
must pay the penalty. But in his particular 



270 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

case, certain other influences which we do 
not know, or do not heed, are at work ; and 
thus a result is reached which differs from 
our expectation. And this misleads us. We 
begin to doubt, really if not consciously, 
the existence of the asserted laws. Now 
this is a part of the system of discipline 
under which we are. There are just excep- 
tions enough to the working out of certain 
causes — exceptions owing, as I have said, 
to the existence of other causes unknown or 
neglected by us — to give us the sense of free- 
dom. The great principles of life are, most 
of them, deduced from thousands of cases, 
or our knowledge of them is so deduced. 
They are true in three quarters, perhaps nine 
tenths, of instances. In the remainder the 
generalization fails. This deceives us. We 
question their reality. We see a man drink 
intemperately day after day, and live to four- 
score ; we doubt whether strong drink is as 
injurious as medical science teaches. We 
see a man transgress every maxim of pru- 
dent management in business, and he does 
not fail ; we doubt whether prudence is 
indeed of the value commonly asserted of 
it. And so the iron hand of fate is lifted 



CLOUDS AND RAIN 271 

and we are left free. But so, also, we are 
liable to deceive ourselves. 

But quite generally men do not think 
on the subject at all. It is too true of most 
that they drift through life. Somehow or 
other they hope to come out right. They 
do not stop to weigh the principles on which 
they act, or to examine the lines in which 
they move. They are like a farmer who 
should neglect to verify his seed and find 
whether he is sowing what will produce 
the crop he wishes ; or like a navigator who 
should make no observations to determine 
whether he is where he ought to be ; or 
like a student who should fail to see whether 
he has the right book — whether he is not 
studying Herodotus, for example, when he 
should be at Thucydides. And yet it is cer- 
tain that not once in a thousand times do 
things go right in the world without care. 
No mariner, on a voyage out of Boston, 
would reach Liverpool by a happy acci- 
dent once in ten thousand times. Every- 
thing demands painstaking in some large 
proportion to its importance. 

But men, I say, quite commonly do not 
think of the principles of their conduct or 



272 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

of its direction, but simply drift through 
life. And so they forget that " if the clouds 
be full of rain, they empty themselves upon 
the earth : and if the tree fall toward the 
south, or toward the north, in the place 
where the tree falleth, there it shall be." 

And now I have led you up to the special 
application of the text, to which I ask your 
chief attention this morning, namely, the 
certainty and unchangeableness of char- 
acter as following upon early conduct. 

What men will be in middle life is 
almost surely foreshadowed by what they 
are at the age of twenty-one. You meet 
your college classmate a score of years 
after graduation. He is the same affable 
and sociable man he was then or the same 
silent, reserved, self-poised man ; the same 
large-hearted, generous man or the same 
hard and selfish one. Of the half-dozen 
varieties of character into which any col- 
lege class may be distributed, all will be 
found to embrace nearly the same individ- 
uals who will be alive twenty or thirty 
years later. Some changes there may be, 
but the germs of these are most of them 



CLOUDS AND RAIN 273 

discoverable even now. That pleasant, 
obliging disposition is even now joined to 
the iron will that is to achieve in the years 
to come; some traces are already reveal- 
ing themselves of that which is to bring 
disgrace and sorrow a quarter of a century 
hence. It is most interesting, and most in- 
structive also, to observe the illustrations 
of this principle. Punctuality observed in 
early life is almost certainly a habit in later 
life. The practice of regularity in the per- 
formance of duty forms its corresponding 
habit. You can predict with almost entire 
confidence what a man will be in these re- 
spects, from what he is in his youth. There 
is such a thing as conventional morality. 
It rests upon common usages and maxims ; 
little or no reference is had in it to the 
right ; little or no regard is paid to the au- 
thority of God. The man who acts accord- 
ing to its standard, might act very much 
worse elsew^here ; or still elsewhere he 
might act very much better. But he does 
not inquire after the becoming, the right- 
eous. Now if this is his morality in early 
life, it will almost inevitably be his in mid- 
dle life. Put him in Congress and he will 



274 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

go with his party ; put him in an executive 
office, and he will bend his duty to party's 
dictates. Not his to refuse, as John Jay 
refused to his friend's request, the doing of 
wrong for partisan purposes. 

Hasty decisions, prejudiced decisions, 
mental unfairness, careless reasoning, rash 
commitments, — all are things which repeat 
themselves in later years. Practices end in 
habits, and habits make up character. The 
clouds fill, — perhaps are long in filling ; 
but when full, they empty themselves. It 
must be so. Esau has lost the blessing, and 
now " he finds no place for repentance, 
though he seek it carefully with tears." We 
are told that the width of the ordinary rail- 
road track was accidentally fixed by the 
width of the carts in which coal was carried 
two hundred years ago in England. First, 
two-wheeled carts, then wooden rails, and 
next four-wheeled wagons were used ; and 
so, step by step, the present wonderful sys- 
tem of locomotion has grown up. But the 
accidental width of those first simple coal- 
carts has determined the usual width of the 
steel track on which the engine of to-day 
rushes at the rate of thirty or fifty miles an 



CLOUDS AND RAIN 275 

hour. So do the first and, as it might seem, 
almost accidentally chosen principles, max- 
ims, estimates, standards, decide our course 
in later years. 

In early life we do not act, for the most 
part, on principles, but as zf such and such 
were our principles. We do not have hab- 
its, but we act as if such and such prac- 
tices were our habits. And in many cases 
the purpose is to adopt other principles, and 
form other habits. When once out of our 
present conditions, we will make a change. 
It is hard now to break away from our as- 
sociates, but the time is coming when we 
shall be separated from them, and then the 
new and right principles, the new and 
right habits, shall be ours. But unfortu- 
nately for this intention, our characters 
(in so far as formed) react upon our cir- 
cumstances, and in some degree create 
them. Every man sets a-going influences 
that react, I say, upon him, and so, I re- 
peat, he makes, in part, the circumstances 
that seem to determine his conduct. The 
indolent man is getting such a reputation 
as will prevent him from securing that 
desirable situation in which he means to 



276 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

become industrious, and will doom him 
to accept another situation peculiarly unfa- 
vorable to reform. He cannot have the 
place he wishes just when he gets ready 
for it. The man who keeps bad company, 
and means to desert it some day, is not 
only forming bad tastes, but making asso- 
ciations, too, which will quite likely pre- 
vent his carrying out that good intention. 
Of course there are exceptions, for the 
fact of freedom must be emphasized. I am 
speaking of general facts and principles. 
In the light of these I affirm that few men, 
comparatively, are in very favorable or un- 
favorable conditions who did not do some- 
thing to put themselves where they are. 
If George Washington owed in measure 
his position as commander-in-chief of the 
American armies to the fact that he was a 
Virginian, yet that the choice fell upon 
him rather than some other son of Virginia 
was due to his merits. If John Somers 
owed to some unknown chance his position 
in Parliament and the oppoi;tunity which 
that gave him to make the great speech of 
a few minutes which established his repu- 
tation, yet that men consented to listen to 



CLOUDS AND RAIN 277 

him in Parliament at such a crisis was due 
to his well-known merits. Industry, tem- 
perance, discretion, fidelity, prepare the 
way for a man's success. These qualities 
become known to his friends, become 
known to others ; and when a vacancy oc- 
curs in which these qualities are needed, 
eyes turn to him. In saying this, I do not 
forget other facts in the providence of 
God ; each one who succeeds in life knows 
of some other who, but for inscrutable rea- 
sons, would probably, in his view, have been 
as successful as he. Each successful man, 
then, has occasion to thank God. But he 
is really indebted to the Lord, not only for 
a gracious providence without, but for a 
spirit within which led him — so to speak 
— to help Providence, 

To almost every person, perhaps to quite 
every one, there is at least one point in his 
career where circumstances are in his favor. 
It may require some virtue to use them, 
but the tide is in his favor and he needs 
only to avail himself of it. Probably he 
does not know the fact ; but the fact is 
there. The particular case may be one 
which demands honesty. He is a clerk, 



278 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

perhaps, in a factory or store. And circum- 
stances are working in his behalf. There 
is to be a vacancy soon above him, and no 
one else is yet thought of for it. His de- 
fects are not such as stand in his way to it. 
But — is he scrupulously honest ? His ap- 
pointment will hinge just there. If he is, 
he may be on the highway to fortune soon. 
If he is not — if, resisting conscience and 
the Spirit of God, he is wronging his em- 
ployer — it will not be the fault of circum- 
stances that he fails to get the place. The 
particular case may be one which demands 
disobedience to conventional morality and 
obedience to God's law. And just at that 
point the question is to be decided, not 
only what sort of a man the boy is to be- 
come, but what kind of a position he is to 
occupy in life. It is a crystallizing point 
in his career. Right there, it is being 
settled whether he is to be the " village 
Hampden " of the poet, or the actual Hamp- 
den of immortal fame. And so upon one 
virtue or another — truthfulness, justice, 
honesty, an obliging disposition, regularity, 
amiableness — may depend what circum- 
stances shall be ; and not merely circum- 



CLOUDS AND RAIN 279 

stances of outward condition, but circum- 
stances that help or hinder moral welfare. 
And it is to be observed that at these 
turning-points in life, the needed virtue is 
often one that it requires much effort not 
to have, as well as some effort to have it. 
The truthfulness or honesty requisite is 
urged upon us with great power — perhaps 
with unusual power. "Speak the truth ! Be 
honest ! " cries conscience ; " Speak the 
truth! Be honest!" whispers the Holy Spirit 
of God; "Speak the truth! Be honest!" 
say all the inner voices. Nay, sometimes one 
has the presentiment that his own highest 
good — even for this life, it may be — de- 
mands of him that he keep his integrity. 
And he has to struggle in order not to obey 
his mentors. And this, even if a little de- 
cision is necessary in order to obey them. 
Indolence, pride, the fear of man, and other 
contemptible minions of evil have him by 
the arm and would lead him to ruin. But 
nobler servants of Right and Good utter 
words of courage and hope. He has but to 
shake off those and follow these, and he is 
safe. He has made his circumstances. He 
is on a new road. If any more contests 



28o CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

with evil or its emissaries await him, it will 
be at points farther on, where he will be bet- 
ter able to meet them. On the other hand, 
each failure to fight the good fight leaves 
us in a worse position for the next conflict. 
We are creating evil conditions. The dis- 
honest man will probably get among asso- 
ciates who, if not positively dishonest, are 
not men to brace him. Through them un- 
favorable influences will come in upon him. 
Distrust towards him will become common. 
And at last he may seem to himself doomed 
to dishonesty. 

Every one, then, in early life is preparing 
and predestining his future habits by his 
present practices, and his future character 
by his present actions. " If the clouds be 
full of rain, they empty themselves upon 
the earth : and if the tree fall toward the 
south, or toward the north, in the place 
where the tree falleth, there it shall be." 
And no mere resolves of future amendment 
will defeat the principle ; no change in out- 
ward circumstance can be expected to arrest 
its working. For now we are helping to 
make the future, and preparing to treat it 



CLOUDS AND RAIN 281 

when It arrives. Let us, then, my friends, 
first stop and think. Let us think, I say; 
let us not be content to drift ; let us ask 
ourselves what are the natural tendencies 
of our present conduct. 

What, then, friend, — for let each put 
it to himself, — what are the principles on 
which you virtually act.f^ I say virtually 
act, for you have not yet adopted them; 
perhaps you are only acting as if they were 
true. What are those principles } Is this, 
one — fidelity to obligation ? Is this, one 
— justice to all men? Is this, one — strict 
loyalty to truth 1 Is this, one — obedience 
to a good conscience in each of its require- 
ments, prompt and full obedience '^. Is this, 
one — God's will supreme and not human 
custom .? 

More than a hundred years ago, a man 
between the ages of twenty and twenty- 
four had adopted several principles, of 
which I will quote a few : " Resolved, to 
live with all my might, while I do live." 
" Resolved, never to do anything which, if 
I should see It in another, I should count a 
just occasion to despise him for, or to think 
any way the more meanly of him." " Re- 



282 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

solved, to be strictly and firmly faithful to 
my trust, that Proverbs xx. 6 (' A faithful 
man who can find ? ') may not be partly ful- 
filled in me." " I frequently hear persons in 
old age say how they would live, if they were 
to live their lives over again : Resolved, 
that I will live just so as I can think I shall 
wish I had done, supposing I live to old 
age." Now these were Jonathan Edwards's 
principles. He acted as if they were his 
principles in early life, and so they stiffened 
and hardened into actual principles and 
real character in later years. When the 
mould and clay were thrown aside, there 
stood revealed the iron which had been 
cast in them, — there was the man. What, 
then, are our principles 1 Let us think on 
this point. 

" If the clouds be full of rain, they empty 
themselves upon the earth." Your charac- 
ter, my youthful friend, may be formed 
sooner than you suppose. It may be al- 
most formed now. At any rate, the things 
that will determine or all but determine 
your character may themselves be almost 
determined already. For, as we have seen, 
your circumstances even, your future cir- 



CLOUDS AND RAIN 283 

cumstances, as well as your treatment of 
them when they arrive, are essentially, not 
to say particularly, being decided by you 
now. The character of your future associ- 
ates, the general nature of your future em- 
ployment, and other things of a general 
nature, — at least as much as this is in de- 
cision already. The mould may be almost 
made, almost finished. The clouds may be 
fuller now than you think, — they proba- 
bly are so. 

" And if the tree fall toward the south, 
or toward the north, in the place where the 
tree falleth, there it shall be." You have 
something to say now as to the direction 
in which the tree shall fall. Only be sure 
that you say it soon enough. For the tree 
begins to fall very early. 

" Oh ! that men were wise, that they 
understood this, that they would consider 
their latter end ! " 

Jesus said, " The Son of man is come to 
seek and to save that which was lost." 



XIX 

THE BREAD FOUND AGAIN 

" Cast thy bread upon the waters, and thou shalt find it after 
many days." — Eccl. xi. i. 

The book of Ecclesiastes is a wonderful 
book. It grows in wonderfulness to the 
reader, — at least if he has gained the key 
to it, — as he himself grows in years. In- 
deed, it is necessary that one should have 
seen something of life to appreciate Eccle- 
siastes. For, on the one hand, it sets forth 
the unsatisfactoriness of all earthly sources 
of happiness in themselves, and on the 
other, it gives not merely many sagacious 
but many wise rules for human conduct. 
In very large part, it is such a book as the 
great German poet might have written in 
his old age seventy years ago, had he been 
more profoundly imbued with the solemn 
truth with which it ends, " God shall bring 
every work into judgment, with every secret 
thing, whether it be good or whether it be 



THE BREAD FOUND AGAIN 285 

evil." Or, more truly, perhaps, we can imag- 
ine it the production of some veteran states- 
man — as, indeed, it purports to be — who 
had mingled in affairs and with men and 
had seen the uncertainty of those and the 
untrustworthiness of these, who had en- 
joyed an uncommonly large share of the 
world's pleasures, intellectual as well as 
physical, and had found the hollowness of 
them all, and who, in the midst of his ex- 
periences, had been garnering up lessons 
of practical wisdom. " The race is not to 
the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor 
yet popular favor to skillful men that are 
worthy of it, but time and chance happen- 
eth to them all," — such words might have 
been written by an Alexander Hamilton or 
a Daniel Webster. 

We are not to look upon the book of 
Ecclesiastes, I judge, as meant to urge a 
single lesson, however important, or, in- 
deed, to teach professedly any lesson at all. 
Rather is it designed to relate the experi- 
ences of one who had seen a great deal of 
the world, with the feelings which they had 
produced or at least would naturally pro- 
duce. He had seen the vanity of earthly 



286 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

things, and sometimes he had felt, or might 
have felt had he confined himself to a single 
point of observation, that " there is nothing 
better than that a man should rejoice in 
his own works " and in the present hour, 
while at other times this same universal 
vanity of earth had turned his thoughts to- 
ward the invisible and unchangeable. He 
had seen, also, the value of certain principles 
of action in the world, and these he sets 
forth with fullness and wisdom. 

It is to one of them that I ask your at- 
tention this morning. 

"Cast thy bread upon the waters" or 
"upon the face of the waters," "for thou 
shalt find it after many days." The reference 
here is perhaps generally taken to be to the 
manner of sowing grain in some Eastern 
countries. The seed is cast upon the waters 
when the river, the Nile, for example, over- 
flows its banks, and sinks into the mud and 
slime. In time — three months it may be — 
after the subsidence of the stream, the grain 
springs up; and so he who might have seemed 
to be throwing it away finds it again in a 
luxuriant harvest, " after many days." 

The meaning of this counsel is often 



THE BREAD FOUND AGAIN 287 

limited unduly, if I mistake not : " Do good 

do it freely — do it without overmuch 

concern as to the success of your attempts, 
and the fruits will appear in time." This 
is certainly one just application. But the 
sentiment is a general one : " Do right and 
be right in all ways ; sow the seed of right 
principles, right aims, right conduct, even 
though you see no good accomplished by 
it; th'e results will yet appear." We are apt 
to think our efforts wasted, as an Oriental 
farmer's slave wading through the water 
that covers his field and scattering seed, 
might think that seed wasted. He does not 
see it sink into the soil; he does see the 
water moving slowly on to the sea; of what 
use to cast the grain upon its dull, dead face ? 
Yet he does it, and after eighty, ninety, one 
hundred days the harvest is gathered. So, 
says the statesman-sage of Ecclesiastes, 
scatter your seed of high endeavor, lofty 
principle, generous sympathy, kindly action. 
It falls, indeed, upon no favoring soil, as it 
should seem, but upon life's restless, unf ruc- 
tifying, cold waves. Yet cast it forth, and 
thou shalt find it in due time. It will have 
found a soil, germinated, and sprung up, 

J 



288 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

and covered the ground with a glorious 
harvest. 

Even in this Hfe we often see a partial 
illustration of the text. For it is a blessed 
truth that, if there is a downward slope to 
moral ruin, there is also an upward one to 
" praise and honor and glory." For life is 
a series of commitments. Each step in it 
commits us in some degree to the next. 
No man entering on a course of action 
knows where it will bring him. Of every 
one it may be said as of the patriarch Abra- 
ham, " He went out, not knowing whither 
he went." We come into new relations. We 
create new circumstances; our very pre- 
sence makes a change. Our characters de- 
velop in unexpected w^ays ; for no man un- 
derstands what is in him, and character and 
condition are much like chemicals the result 
of whose mixture is learned by experiment 
only. 

A young man goes from the country to 
live in a great city. A few years of success- 
ful business and he will return to the old 
farm, — such is his thought. But even if 
prospered according to his hopes, he does 
not go back. The very removal from his 



THE BREAD FOUND AGAIN 289 

early home, perhaps with something of a 
wrench, waked up a spirit of enterprise 
which was dormant before. And this com- 
mits him to a Hfe of enterprise, so that 
when wealth comes he has no desire for 
rest, but longs to do and achieve still more. 
Meantime he has entered into new rela- 
tionships in the city, — mercantile, social, 
domestic, and these have committed him 
to new obligations and new attachments. 
While he delays his return to the country, 
a family grows up around him, and their 
affections centre where they are ; and so in 
his old age he is again committed to his 
city home, after the love of enterprise has 
died out and his other ties to it have been 
greatly weakened. And so he ends his days 
there. And all this without any reference 
to the change in tastes, ideas, notions of 
convenience and comfort, which he has un- 
consciously made. 

Now, this common history furnishes us 
with an illustration of what is taking place 
in the character of every man, — of the 
good man as of any other. His seed-sowing 
is preparing a happy harvest. For in what 
he does and is that is right, he is commit- 



290 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

ting himself to other right acts and states. 
Each deed or sentiment of holy obedience, 
of humble faith, of gentle submission, com- 
mits him to the next and to a greater. 
Does he scatter — and seem to waste — the 
seed of patience, forbearance, meekness, and 
long-suffering .f* It is not lost. For " there 
is that scattereth and yet increaseth," just 
as " there is that withholdeth more than is 
meet, but it tendeth to poverty." You see 
a disciple of Christ, a widow, perhaps, and 
one who has known better days and was 
once able to do and did much for others, 
but is now poor. Her life is occupied with 
little, almost insignificant acts, thoughts, 
emotions. She must be content with little 
kindnesses and trivial gifts, and with shed- 
dino: down on others the unconscious bene- 
fits of patience, cheerfulness, trustfulness, 
like so many seeds cast upon the barren 
waters to go where they may. But she is 
preparing for herself the bread of the future, 
even though it may be " after many days." 
And preparing it for this world, quite 
likely, as well as the next. She is sowing for 
a harvest of cheerfulness and hope in her 
old age. She is committing herself to a 



THE BREAD FOUND AGAIN 291 

habit of cheerfulness and hope in dark 
days, which will stand her in stead in those 
that may await her. Such days may find 
others very sorrowful, — the prosperous 
worldling may be overwhelmed with gloom. 
He has had " his good things," the things 
he counted good, and now that they are 
gone there is nothing left him but to la- 
ment the past, and drea4 — or banish the 
thought of — the future. Not so with her. 
She is reaping a harvest of contentment 
and peace and also hopefulness, for she 
knows experimentally the meaning of the 
inspired declaration that for the believer 
" tribulation worketh patience ; and pa- 
tience, experience," or approval ; " and ex- 
perience, hope." She has found that bread 
which she had cast upon the waters. 

To us of the West, the figure of our text 
may suggest something which it would not 
to an inhabitant of Egypt or of the sea- 
coast of China or of some other parts of the 
world. Yet the ordinary Oriental, I judge, 
would, like ourselves, find a hint at the 
frequently discouraging circumstances in 
which we are called to do the right or the 



292 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

good. When kindness is shown to the un- 
thankful or the unappreciative, for example, 
it may seem sheer waste. Yet, let us cast 
our bread upon the waters. For one thing, 
— as this same book tells us in this same 
chapter, — " Thou knowest not which shall 
prosper, whether this or that, or whether 
they both shall be alike good ; " we cannot 
always anticipate the results of our bene- 
factions, — can we commonly ? The un- 
promising recipient is often very rewarding. 
Besides, what is done for such an one gives 
others, if not himself, an insight into the 
nature of that true goodness, which blesses 
because it is in it to bless, like the sun 
which shines because it is its nature to 
shine, — and it is that view of goodness 
which quickens or melts, and not the mere 
enjoyment of its favors. Even the selfish 
man wants your gifts less than he wants 
yourself, your sympathy and concern, and 
this of which I speak is still more precious 
than that. Let us, then, broadcast the seed, 
and be children of Him "who maketh his 
sun to rise on the evil and on the good and 
sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." 
And in so doing, we cast seed upon the 



THE BREAD FOUND AGAIN 293 

waters of our own lives as well as others' 
lives. We commit ourselves to a habit of 
broad and generous action, to views, senti- 
ments, and ways like those of the blessed 
God. In time there shall spring up a crop 
of these on which our spirits will feed with 
joy. Then we shall understand the meaning 
of the Master when He said that it is more 
blessed to give than to receive. For we 
shall be in measure like Him, having a foun- 
tain of blessedness within us. Men may 
wonder at our happiness, but we shall have 
" meat to eat that they know not of." 

Now, dear young people, some may say 
to you. Why squander your bread upon 
the waters ? You are throwing away your 
sympathy upon worthless objects. But if 
you listen to the prompting of the text, and 
not to mistaken friends, you will yet verify 
the promise, and yours will be the enjoy- 
ment which comes from a benevolent spirit, 
enlarged views, and the sight of happiness 
around you. You will gain that most deli- 
cate of pleasures — to find happiness in the 
happiness of others. 

In general, it is obvious, bread may be 
said to be cast upon the waters when right 



294 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

is done or kindness shown in ordinary cir- 
cumstances, where there is nothing espe- 
cially to encourage. Of what use ? is the 
question often raised ; what good will it do 
any one to be particular in little things, to 
be considerate in trifles, to be faithful 
to convictions in small matters, to apply 
principles on which even a nation's policy 
might be built to the common round of 
life ? — and at the cost of ease or comfort, 
at the sacrifice of present enjoyment. The 
text answers the question ! 

If it were some extraordinary occasion, 
one says, if there were anything to be defi- 
nitely gained by adherence to a general 
principle, if it would do me or some one 
else any good, to be firm and conscientious 
in so little a thing, 't would be different. But 
this sowing in the water — unfurrowed — 
in all ways unprepared, is vain. Nay, re- 
plies the sage across the ages, and his nay 
is reechoed from each past century: the 
pleasure which you shrink from surrender- 
ing, the world for whose sake you falter, 
the self-indulgence which makes you wish 
to neglect duty, — these are vain. They 
are indeed vanity and vexation of spirit. 



THE BREAD FOUND AGAIN 295 

But, and for this very reason, too, cast thy 
bread upon the waters. Earth shall perish ; 
riches, strength, learning, — all shall fade. 
But righteousness, justice, love, integrity, 
obedience to God, — these which are the 
bread of life, are eternal ! 

That is a beautiful chapter with which 
the book of Ecclesiastes ends, — a chapter 
in which the two parts of the book, as I have 
described them, blend at last, the keynote 
of the vanity of all things being preserved 
but employed to give emphasis to the high- 
est lesson of practical wisdom, " Fear God 
and keep his commandments." " Remem- 
ber now thy Creator in the days of thy 
youth, " it begins, " while the evil days 
come not, nor the years draw nigh, when 
thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in 
them ; while the sun, or the light," — the 
twilight, — " or the moon, or the stars " 
— our last resource at night — " be not 
darkened, nor the clouds return after the 
rain : in the day when the keepers of the 
house " — the arms which protect the body, 
our dwelling — "shall tremble, and the 
strong men shall bow themselves, and the 



296 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

grinders cease " to labor, " because they are 
few, and those that look out of the win- 
dows " — the eyes ? — " be darkened, and 
the doors" — or lips? "shall be shut in 
the streets, . . . also when they shall be 
afraid of that which is high, and fears shall 
be in the way," characteristics of old age ; 
" and the almond-tree " — which blooms in 
the winter — " shall flourish, and the grass- 
hopper shall be a burden, and desire " or 
appetite " shall fail : because man goeth to 
his long home, and the mourners go about 
the streets : Or ever," that is, before ever, 
" the silver cord " — which holds the lamp 
of life — " be loosed, or the golden bowl " — 
which feeds the flame with oil — "be broken, 
or the pitcher " — which holds the water of 
life (another figure for the same thing) — 
" be broken, or the wheel " — which raises 
the water — " be broken at the cistern. 
Then shall the dust return to the earth as 
it was: and the spirit shall return unto 
God who gave it." 

Such is old age and its end, for nothing 
remains beyond it in this world. But in all 
its infirmities there may be strength. One 
remembered his Creator in the davs of his 



THE BREAD FOUND AGAIN 297 

youth, and the habit of confiding and 
happy remembrance of his God was formed. 
He learned to recognize His hand in Hfe, 
to acknowledge His authority, to trace His 
wisdom and love ; he committed himself 
to this course, — again I say, life is a series 
of commitments, — and now he is at peace. 
He learned to look upward in the days of 
vigor, and now he is sustained in the days 
of weakness, for He in whom he trusted 
" giveth power to the faint." Is he " afraid 
of that which is high," and are " fears in the 
way " ? But " they that wait on the Lord 
shall mount up with wings as eagles." Are 
" the sun and the moon and the stars dark- 
ened ".f* But, oh, glorious promise! " Light 
is sown for the righteous." Yes, in that 
early sowing upon the waters, he was cast- 
ing seeds of light though he knew it not ; 
the waters have subsided, and now over 
all the plain is a radiant crop of gladness. 
For, hope — hope, the fancied prerogative 
of youth — is his. 

But what is this I see ? The silver cord 
was loosed, the golden bowl was broken, 
methought, and the pitcher was broken at 
the fountain and the wheel broken at the 



298 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 

cistern. But behold ! these, led by the 
Lamb, are by " living fountains of waters." 
The fulfillment of the text, then, is in 
heaven. It is there that the bread once 
cast forth is fully found again, — that the 
great harvest of light is reaped. 



APPENDIX 



1 



APPENDIX 

Extracts from Letter of resignation, July i, 
1900, and Address of farewell, December 
16, 1900. 

"To-day finds me among the five or six in 
our denomination in New England and New 
York State, and probably in the whole country, 
who have been longest engaged in the active 
work of the Christian ministry in the same place." 

" The Pastor has done but little, since he came 
to this place, for the Press. He has deemed it 
his grand work to invest his energies in young 
men here." 

" It has been sought to accomplish this by 
addressing intuitions, conscience, and the higher 
nature generally. Reason has been appealed to. 
* Come, let us reason together,' has been the 
constant call. It is un-reason which the Gos- 
pel resists when it summons to Faith, — unrea- 
sonableness, worldliness, self-indulgence, self- 
will. Not so much needs to be said as might be 
supposed, methinks, to skeptics, who, after all, 



302 APPENDIX 

are comparatively few. The best thing for them 
is to remind them of the four anchors. In Paul's 
shipwreck, you remember, the seamen * cast four 
anchors out of the stern, and wished ' — or prayed 
— * for the day.* Reverence — and any real reli- 
gion deserves much of that, be it Mohamme- 
dan, Brahmanic, Buddhistic — reverence, I say, 
prompt obedience to known and readily known 
duty, service to one's fellow men, and profound 
reverence for Christ — however conceived of 
metaphysically — these will hold the ship." 

" Let us attempt the best things possible to 
us. And let us not define * the possible ' too 
narrowly. If my life has taught me anything, I 
had almost said, it has taught me that lesson. I 
believe but few very important things have been 
done in the world which have not been declared 
impossible beforehand, and often by thoughtful 
people." 

" I am not wont to note any but superficial 
faults in the sons of Dartmouth, — and what 
energy and perseverance and generosity have I 
not seen among them ! But I ask myself some- 
times whether in the long, necessary, and most 
arduous struggle of life they may not form the 
habit of seeking great things for themselves, and 
fail to form the habit of self-sacrificing service. 
Yet many, yes, very many have I known here 
in college and outside of college, in obscure life 
as well as in high places, who have sought great 



APPENDIX 303 

things for their Lord and their fellow-men, and 
who in the final day shall be 'found unto praise 
and honor and glory.' " 

" Numbered with them may we be 
Here and in eternity ! " 



Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton &' Co. 
Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 



JUN 24 1904 



I 



